Posts matching tags 'gentrification'
2007/5/10
The Age has an article about how, thanks to some two decades of thoughtful urban planning, Melbourne has advanced ahead of Sydney in terms of creative culture:
Melburnians had gained more public open space and access to waterfront lost for decades and, since 1991, thousands had been to encouraged to live in the "central activities district", creating demand for bars, restaurants and footpath cafes. Melbourne's laneways had been protected through height regulations and, between 1983 and 2004, active arcade frontage had increased from 300 metres to 3 kilometres, Adams said. And only bluestone paving is now allowed in the city.
The City of Melbourne had also invested in public art to improve the public domain, determined by an independent artists' panel.
The Sydney envy at hearing of Melbourne's leadership in city planning, architecture and art spilled into newsprint. Sydney University adjunct associate professor of architecture Elizabeth Farrelly lamented Sydney's developers had erased a plethora of laneways and back streets with skyscrapers, while much of Sydney's character had been "Botoxed away".
Farrelly declared that the biggest difference between the two cities is Sydney's "sheer cultural timidity - from fashion to cafes and from public art to architecture - compared with Melbourne's cultural courage".A big part of the difference is in affordability, with Sydney's property prices, cost of living (Sydney is the fifth most "severely unaffordable" city in the affluent English-speaking countries, while Melbourne is the 23rd) and hypercompetitive, status-obsessed culture choking local creativity, putting pressure on artists to get a real job to keep up or otherwise leave for somewhere less sharky.
Of course, affluenza is hitting Melbourne as well; property prices are skyrocketing, and the young creative people who filled up the inner cities are being displaced further and further out, making room for moneyed yuppies with a taste for boutique lifestyles. Perhaps one of these days we will find that Springvale or Sunshine has become Melbourne's Neukölln, sufficiently populated with thrifty creatives and bohemians to have a vibrant local culture but insufficiently "funkified" (in the words of estate agents) to have attracted the yuppies?
(via 
givemethegun) ¶ [no comments]
2005/6/13
The blanding of St Kilda, once the sleazy, dangerous and vital epicentre of Melbourne underground culture and now safely homogeneous chrome-plated playground of the affluent, continues apace; now local independent record shop Raoul Records is closing down at the end of the month. Which means one fewer reason to venture south of the Yarra. I guess the Porsche-owners of the new St Kilda don't care much for weird little post-punk/garage-rock/psychobilly/country-and-Preston bands.
(via cos) ¶ [5 comments]
2005/2/18
Famous New York rock venue CBGB may soon be forced to close by rising property rents. Now where have I heard that before? (via bOING bOING)
2004/11/5
As yuppification and noise complaints force venues in Melbourne's traditional live music heartland (Fitzroy and environs) to close, go all-acoustic or become wine bars or boutique apartments, the scene is moving further out, and is apparently about to cross the barrier into Northcote; the people who run the Corner Hotel in Richmond are opening a new venue there next year, and looking for a name for it. Which could be a good sign for Northcote, which has mostly been a folk/roots/blues/feral-techno sort of place until now, though should have the demographics to support a live rock scene. I wonder whether it'll be the seed of a new local scene, or just an isolated venue like the ones which opened up in other "one-further-out" areas (Preston, Footscray, Sydney Rd. and such).
2004/3/9
Hip-hop is going adult (not to be confused with adult-contemporary), with rappers releasing porn videos, usually starring themselves as masters of ceremonies rather than actors.
Meanwhile, a LA Times article excerpted here on FmH asserts that the reason why the superlatively bland "jazz" singer Norah Jones is so popular is as a reaction against the domination of the charts by hip-hop. (It appears that there's nothing more safe and comforting than the bourgeois, ossified, whitebread contemporary form of what was once regarded as a scary and dangerous (and very black) musical genre; remember the infamous scare quotes from 1930s marijuana prohibition hearings linking the evil weed with "Satanic" jazz music and interracial sex?)
Which all ties in with Ben Butler's assertion that classical traning and codification are killing rock, as they did jazz, using the example of George being the worst band in Australia as a Terrible Example.
2004/1/1
Your Humble Narrator spent this New Year's Eve at the Cue Bar, seeing Dandelion Wine and The Beautiful Few (who combine sardonic social commentary with an Australian New Wave aesthetic, like some cross between Pulp and The Models). All in all, a fairly typical NYE.
On the way back, walking up Brunswick St., I realised that Fitzroy has turned into Prahran; everywhere I went, I could hear the muscular thump of house music. Mind you, we're probably behind the curve here; in Prahran, they're probably into more fashionable things than house music, like NME '70s-Revival Rock or daggy 1980s top-40 hits or cunnilingus-themed rap songs or something.
2003/5/5
Not that long after Melbourne community radio station PBS-FM was forced out of yuppified St Kilda, it's 3RRR's turn to move. 3RRR's lease on its Fitzroy premises (right off the trendy Brunswick St. latte strip) is coming to an end, and the landlord has told them to move on. They're hoping to find a place in "Fitzroy, Collingwood or Carlton", though with the yuppification of inner-city areas, that sounds a bit optimistic. An industrial park in Lalor or Thomastown or somewhere sounds more likely. Or they could always look around Footscray; it's becoming trendy, but still grimy enough to be cheap.
2003/4/28
You know Brunswick St. is past its use-by date when the funky alternative clothing and bauble shops start opening childrenswear shops. The funky kids who hung out there in years gone by, back when it was "cool" and "alternative", are now in their 30s, married, mortgaged and with children of their own, and so the groovy boutiques have moved with the times and opened babywear boutiques, and the cycle continues. Though it makes one wonder what kids whose parents dressed them in Brunswick St. alternative clothes from the day they were born will do when they reach adolescence and need to individuate themselves.
2002/10/14
Local community radio station 3RRR has rejected a sponsorship/advertising deal from the DJ bar opening where the Punters Club used to be, on the grounds that the name "Bimbo Deluxe" is offensive. The owners deny any offense intended, claiming that it is named after an Italian café. Are 3RRR being PC nazis? Or would opening a bar named Bimbo Deluxe feed the rise of a Chapel St.-style "show-us-ya-tits" hoon culture in the formerly countercultural, bohemian Brunswick St?
(I wonder how long 3RRR will stick around there; for one, the culture of the area is now a lot more Nova FM than 3RRR, and secondly, the yuppie apartments being built in the former Universal Theatre next door to the station could put a damper on rooftop live-to-air events. It wouldn't surprise me if, within the decade, they relocate to Northcote/Thornbury or some place.)
Anyway, I'm sure Bimbo Deluxe will find that Nova FM/Fox/MMM will be more than happy to take their money and run promotional campaigns for them. And their clientele probably don't listen to weird community stations like 3RRR anyway.
2002/1/16
The Death of Brunswick St. (an ongoing saga): This week's issue of the Melbourne Times has a section on the transformation of Brunswick St. into an upmarket gated community and shopping mall. There is an article about a plan to dig a tunnel from the housing commission blocks to Sunshine, to provide residents with "access to affordable consumables and appropriate social activities"; the article has a photograph of the public housing block surrounded by a high wall, keeping all the riff-raff in. Then there is the section on the "bigger, brighter and better" Brunswick St., with photographs of the Punters Club Photoshopped into a Country Road, the new Planet Hollywood, and a Starbucks.
Planet Hollywood, which replaced Flowers Vasette in December, is now the hottest nightspot in town. "It is amazing. The young professionals from their designer apartments, and even people from the eastern and southern suburbs, are flocking to this vibrant venue," Ome said.
Yes, it's a parody issue, but it's (unfortunately) too close to the truth.
2001/10/21
A piece on public radio station PBS, which has been forced out of St Kilda by rising rents and yuppie pinks who don't like that noisy weird shit taking over, and is moving to Collingwood. (Collingwood? They'll probably have to move on from there within 10 years once yuppification takes hold. And anyone want to bet on how long 3RRR will stay in Fitzroy (just off Brunswick Street latté-land, where the Punters Club won't be for much longer), before being moved on to an industrial park in Lalor or someplace?)
2001/2/20
In St Kilda, street prostitution is a major problem for the BMW-driving latte-sipping ad-exec residents, with kerb-crawling johns cruising their streets at night searching for bootywhang, consummating the transactions in their yards and dumping used condoms in their designer letterboxes. Professor Marcia Neave, architect of brothel legalisation in the 1980s, suggests that the answer may lie in legal street prostitution precincts, safely away from residential areas. Though given the rapid gentrification of St Kilda, a more practical answer may be to drive the prostitutes out to Brunswick or Coburg, as was done with artists, students, ferals and other non-yuppies formerly indigenous to the ritzy bayside area.