Rex Jory: Rundle Mall is a disgrace and last week’s heat proved the upgrade hasn’t worked

Someone has to say it. Rundle Mall is a hostile, anti-pedestrian wasteland, writes Rex Jory, with too-little shade. Last week’s 40C heat proved that someone got the upgrade wrong — now it’s time to fix it.

A shade-free Rundle Mall. Picture: AAP / Morgan Sette

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Rundle Mall is a ridiculous disgrace. During last week’s brutal heatwave perhaps 100m of slatted wooden seating was exposed to the relentless sun.

On a 40C day it was impractical, if not impossible, to sit on the unshaded seats. The metal frames were hot to touch and even the polished timber was uncomfortably warm.

Not surprisingly, the seats were almost entirely unused.

There were more seats in sun than the few which were shaded by the Lilliputian Chinese elm trees.

It is five years now since the Mall was upgraded. At the time, the Adelaide City Council said when the trees matured there would be plenty of shaded seating.

Rubbish.

Last week, the Mall was a cauldron, a scorched valley where pedestrians could find precious little respite from the relentless sun unless they took shelter in retail stores, restaurants and coffee shops.

Boxing Day sales shoppers wait outside David Jones in Rundle Mall. Picture: AAP Image /Morgan Sette

It’s time the council — and anyone else who played a part in upgrading South Australia’s premier retail strip — admitted the design of the Mall is a disaster.

Unless, of course, it is cunningly planned to force people into the retail businesses. No Council, no gaggle of retailers, would be so Machiavellian, so cynical, so desperate for trade that they designed the Mall to drive people off the paved pedestrian boulevard into shops.

Disregarding this absurd possibility, the Council must concede the Mall needs yet another major overhaul before next summer.

The first thing that must be done is to plant more adequate shade trees immediately over the currently exposed seating. If that is too difficult or somehow creates too many obstacles which may inhibit fire safety, then temporary tents or shade cloth must be erected to provide shade and respite for the hardy shoppers — and, of course, tourists.

And what about the toddlers who want to play on those enchanting, but hot-to-touch pigs? There’s an accident waiting to happen.

Online comments about the Mall tag it is hot and drab. “Don’t visit on a hot day, there is virtually no shade and the seats, as well as being uncomfortable, are in the sun,” wrote one critic five years go.

Another wrote: “Rundle Mall used to be fantastic, plenty of shady trees, lots of seats and great atmosphere. It is now a shell of a Mall it used to be … it is a hot, sparse, dry, unfriendly place with no trees and crap conditions. Avoid where possible.”

When I visited the Mall on a 36C day last week, plenty of people took this advice. The crowds were sparse and it’s hard to believe many shops would have achieved their anticipated sales figures.

Unless it was absolutely necessary — as it was in my case — there was little to recommend the Mall as a shopping experience. One hardy busker sat in the shade of the silver balls playing a violin, but otherwise it was the day the music died.

The Mall will play an active part in this year’s Festival Fringe. But if Adelaide turns on another burst of 35C-plus days during the Fringe it will simply be too hot.

Entertainers will be reluctant to set up their temporary stages or tents and the potential audience will be even more reluctant to turn up.

Adelaide is one of the hottest cities in the world in mid-summer. A friend in New York emailed me last week to say Adelaide’s heatwave was mentioned on US news bulletins.

So why would we design a pedestrian shopping mall that has precious little shade and exposes seating to the direct sun?

It would be like designing a shopping precinct in the Northern Hemisphere that exposes people to the snow and freezing winds.

Of course, advocates of the remodelled and now mature Mall will accuse me of knocking, of whingeing, of finding fault. OK, guilty as charged.

But someone has to say it. Rundle Mall is a disgrace. It is a hostile, anti-pedestrian wasteland. Somebody got it wrong. It’s time to put it right.