The Parklands are Adelaide's greatest asset. It's a ring of parks that surround the city's centre. In 1837 Colonel Light designed the layout of Adelaide, and he included 931 hectares (2300 acres) of parklands. It's quite unique.
The Parklands are continually under threat from people and groups who consider it as cheap development land. Over the years, politicians have allowed all sorts of junk to be placed in the Parklands.
Remember the expression :
"You don't really know a person until you have to share an
inheritence with them."
Well, you could also say:
"You don't really know a sporting group until you share a bit of the
Parklands with them".
Sporting groups in the Parklands often evolve into money hungry corporations that will do anything to the Parklands to survive. Since politicians like to strut at sporting events, they are often complicit in the destruction of the Parklands.
Update:
until recently, there has been a big push to build corporate facilities
in Victoria Park (for high flyers to watch horse racing
and car racing).
Thankfully the South Australian Jockey Club have taken the tough but
sensible decision to concentrate their efforts on their excellent
Morphettville race course (called Allan Scott Park, named after the
generous businessman Allan Scott OAM AO).
Allan Scott Park is perfectly located along the recently
rejuvenated tram line that runs between the popular seaside location of
Glenelg and the Adelaide city centre.
The state government has also sensibly decided to provide temporary
shade for the many motor race fans, instead of building corporate facilities
for a few high flyers and journalists.
Unfortunately the leader of the local political party called the "Liberal Party" (Martin Hamilton-Smith) has stated that he will take control of the Parklands and build the corporate facilities in Victoria Park (if his party wins the next election).
Please let the following people know that development in the
Adelaide Parklands is undesirable:
Martin Hamilton-Smith - Leader of the Liberal Party (www.saliberal.org.au)
Mike Rann - Premier of South Australia (www.ministers.sa.gov.au)
Kevin Foley - Deputy Premier (www.ministers.sa.gov.au)
Michael Harbison - Lord Mayor of Adelaide (www.adelaidecitycouncil.com)
For more information please visit the Adelaide Parklands Preservation
Association at www.adelaide-parklands.org
If you are able, please donate some money to the Association,
they need all the money they can get.
Images are from the Adelaide City Council web site (used with permission) - www.adelaidecitycouncil.com
The following articles from The Advertiser eloquently explain the pressure the Parklands are under:
By TIM LLOYD
Heritage Matters,
The Advertiser
August 21, 2004
HAVING generously been given access to the Parklands in the first place, sports clubs are forever trying to cement their claims.
This week's attempt at a land grab by the South Australian Jockey Club (www.sajc.com.au) and motor sport boards is the latest bout in the never-ending battle.
The SAJC hopes to sell land that it actually owns - Cheltenham Racecourse - and firm up its grip on land that it doesn't - Victoria Park.
Victoria Park belongs to the public, not horse or car racing, and that fact has been conveniently forgotten. Its SAJC lease actually expires in a fortnight.
In the meantime the new double racetrack layout hands a permanent starting grid grandstand to car racing, something we were promised would never happen.
There are several very serious heritage issues at stake here.
First, the idea of taking the heritage-listed Victoria Park grandstand out of its horse racing context and devoting it to car racing is completely outrageous.
The grandstand is part of the state's horse racing history and certainly has nothing to do with car racing, refurbished or not.
Under the new plan, horses would not come within hundreds of metres of the grandstand.
The second outrage is that making the car racing stand a permanent two-faced structure, catering to cars on the east and horses on the west.
The current temporary grandstands are an annual blot out in the middle of the Parklands that the public bemoans for two months of the year.
The proposed layout would cement them there for all time and double the issues of access and security that already bedevil the area.
The SAJC vision flies completely in the face of campaigns to return more of the Parklands to public amenity.
At present, the car and horse racetracks are integrated within the horse racetrack layout but the proposal separates the two - nearly doubling the amount of space taken up by the racetracks.
While the SAJC offers to return a section of the existing racetrack to parklands, it does not mention the huge amount of extra parklands space that the separated two racetracks will require.
In terms of usage, the cynical could argue that the sale of the Cheltenham Racecourse would offer the opportunity for far more racing at Victoria Park. Whether the local residents and general parklands users would see it this way is another matter altogether.
Worse still is the possibility that a permanent, dedicated, car racetrack would have to justify its existence by offering increased noisy car racing in the Parklands.
Many people grudgingly approved of Formula 1 car racing in the Parklands because of the prestige of the event. They had no idea it would continue to be used for car-racing after Formula 1.
Now we have the possibility that yet another lever being pulled to take the Parklands away from its intent: a serene and quiet breathing space in a bustling city.
The Advertiser
By Steve Condous [Steve Condous is a former lord mayor of Adelaide and former MP]
The Advertiser
March 9, 2007
The greatest privilege ever given me in my life, is to have lived every single day in Adelaide. I totally support the Clipsal 500 [car race] because of the benefits to the economy, to the tourism and hospitality industries and the thousands of young South Australians who work in it.
It also gives SA the opportunity to show the rest of Australia and the world that, when it comes to major events, we're simply the best.
Our parklands are the envy of Australia and the world sees Adelaide as a beautiful city built in the middle of a park.
I was the first to applaud the government, when Premier Mike Rann and then environment minister John Hill announced the passing of the parklands preservation Bill and declared the parklands safe from further development of public buildings.
If the proposed redevelopment of Victoria Park proceeds, South Australians will forever blame this Government for its decimation, and history will record that fact. I am ashamed at the building of the Wine Centre and Next Generation Gym on parklands.
I fought against it and lost. I support Jane Lomax-Smith in her fight to save Victoria Park.
As former lord mayors we are committed to saving every inch of the "people's park". The present Lord Mayor Michael Harbison is nowhere to be heard on this issue. He should be opposing this development and telling the Government the council will not issue a new lease to the SA Jockey Club.
If he supports the grandstand, ratepayers will voice their opinion through the ballot box in the council elections in November.
If this building in Victoria Park proceeds Adelaide will become famous for the wrong reasons; every planning conference worldwide will cite it as an example of how irresponsible and destructive planning destroyed one of the great parks of Adelaide, using before and after photographs. This $55 million grandstand will be the biggest and ugliest structure built on Adelaide's parklands.
Adelaide has always been seen as a city committed to planning excellence, yet now, to save $1 million each year to erect and dismantle the pits stand, we are prepared to desecrate the greatest asset this city has - its beautiful and unique parklands.
Every weekend Veale Gardens and Rymill, Elder, Bonython and Botanic parks are filled with thousands of SA families enjoying barbecues and picnics. The parklands are the greatest asset given us by Colonel Light, whose vision nearly 200 years ago surveyed a city surrounded by parklands, five major squares, a perfect grid of wide roads, and a river flowing through the city. It is the very reason we enjoy the quality of life we have today.
It is time for all South Australians to stand up and stop this horrendous building proceeding. The parklands belong to the people, not governments. Enough is enough.
We owe it to future generations to hand them unspoilt parklands.
No structure 250 meters long and three or four storeys high can enhance Victoria Park.
Let the SAJC stay at Cheltenham and Morphettville [race courses], run the Clipsal 500 on the existing track, erect and dismantle all structures, then demolish all walls and grandstands and ugly buildings except the heritage grandstand and hand over Victoria Park to the rightful owners, the Kaurna people and the citizens of SA.
The Advertiser
By Rex Jory
The Advertiser
September 25, 2006
ADELAIDE people don't appreciate their city parklands. I sometimes wonder whether we deserve such fabulous amenities. The Adelaide parklands are unique. They are something utterly special, spasmodically beautiful, potentially stunning.
They give the city space, light and air. Sections of them, particularly to the east and the south, rank among the loveliest and most diverse public city parks in the world. Other areas, to the west, are shamefully neglected, under-developed and certainly under-utilised.
While we neglect sections of our parklands, we cannot claim comparisons with London's St James Park, New York's Central Park, or Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens.
Social and architectural commentator, Peter Ward, has said the parklands are beyond the capabilities of the Adelaide City Council to maintain and upgrade.
He said the ACC's budget of $12 million a year was to look after more than 700ha of parklands, compared with Melbourne's $23 million to look after 560ha.
Successive state governments also share responsibility for the condition of the parklands.
Former Adelaide lord mayor, Lewis Cohen, said in 1910: "The parks are the pride and glory of this city - the best and greatest asset it has, or ever can have. "To every generation they are becoming more valuable. "Let us therefore keep them inviolate, keep them intact, keep them sacred from the hands of despoilers." We have failed Mr Cohen's vision of almost a century ago. What we have is still marvellous despite the creeping greed and stupidity of successive governments, state and local. What madness it was to construct the Adelaide Boys High School in the West Parklands. And what madness it will be to allow a permanent grandstand and pits for a car race in the East Parklands. In the late 1990s, I was on a city council committee which helped draft a blueprint for the future development of the parklands. There was no request, or support, for a grandstand. Nor should there have been.
The City Council has a pile of reports as tall as our imposing Lord Mayor, Michael Harbison, outlining plans for the parklands. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote: "I have searched all the parks in all the cities, and found no statues of committees". It should be the people, not committees, who decide the future of the parklands.
I suspect that the people, either living and working in the city or in the fringe inner suburbs, don't want great sections of their parklands fenced off for much of the year. They don't want crass commercialisation. They don't want permanent monuments to motor sports.
Imagine what would happen in London if someone suggested building a grandstand in Green Park beside Buckingham Palace or in Sydney's Hyde Park? A walk in the parklands is revealing. Yesterday morning, 50 ducks and half as many ducklings trawled a rain-filled puddle in the East Parklands. Four kookaburras perched on a single gum tree branch near East Tce. Superbly coloured parrots flashed through the trees and fossicked on the grass.
Few cities in the world have such beauty so close to the business and retail districts. Adelaide's parklands are special and unique. Either we want them gently, subtly maintained and upgraded - and no one doubts there is room for improvement - or we are content to allow the incremental erosion of open space by permanent infrastructure.
We should heed U.S. president John F. Kennedy, who said: "It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before us, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours".
The Advertiser