Opinion: Brisbane’s identity at risk from ever-bigger development

As building limits get ever higher, Brisbane’s city planners will be judged harshly if they disrespect our character, writes Mike O’Connor. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Brisbane’s distinctive character is at risk, writes Mike O’Connor.

If you live in a place long enough, its character gets under your skin and you develop a certain affection for its quirks and peculiarities, for all cities are different.

Brisbane has been my home for most of my life. As a child I would stay at my maternal grandmother’s house in Paddington and watch a man leading a horse and cart along the street calling out, “Clothes props! Clothes props!”

For the benefit of those of more tender years, clothes props were lengths of timber used to support the clothes lines on which laundry was hung in those pre-Hills Hoist days.

Nana didn’t have a fridge and the ice man would drop off a block of ice every morning for her ice chest, the milkman would pour fresh unhomogenised milk in a jug left out for that purpose, trams rattled down the streets and the City Hall towered over the centre of “town”.

I am, then, no stranger to change and have witnessed the evolution of the city with a certain degree of pride.

I love living here, and wouldn’t care to live anywhere else, although if someone were to toss me the keys to a villa in France for a few months every year, that would be nice.

That evolution is now poised to become a revolution.

Change is good but has to be measured and it seems that suddenly as the reality of the Olympic and Paralympic Games comes into sharper focus, the old order is being cast aside.

High-rise apartments up to 80 storeys are now being planned with at least 5000 new apartments, or “homes” as they are now described in official-speak, planned for South Brisbane-West End.

What was to be riverside parkland will now be concrete and steel.

I’m all for apartments – I live in one.

But is anyone really considering the impact that this massive ingestion of people and cars will have on the people already living in these suburbs, some of the oldest in the city?

Montague Rd, which is the main thoroughfare paralleling the river, is already heavily trafficked.

Gridlock will be inevitable.

Everyone will use public transport, says the council.

No, they won’t.

They’ll drive to their places of work on the northside or southside or in the eastern suburbs.

All of these plans to erase accepted restrictions on building heights and population density are founded on a mountain of rhetoric.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner says 600 people – a nice round number – are arriving in Brisbane every week so we need to build, build, build.

I imagine that before they arrived, it occurred to the 600 who allegedly arrived last week – and the 600 who will allegedly arrive this week – that when they got here they would need somewhere to live, and have arranged to rent/buy in advance.

They are being absorbed into the community, and are not dragging their suitcases through the streets hoping to find a manger and a bed of straw.

Super-high-rise buildings are wonderful for developers.

Raise the height limit from 20 to 40 or 80 storeys and they make twice or four times more money from the same piece of real estate, and the council collects more in rates.

What tends to be overlooked is that these planning laws were put in place for a reason. They are there to protect the lifestyle and life quality of existing residents.

The planning law changes being mooted for a number of suburbs are said to be needed to stop urban “sprawl”, this being an emotive term suggesting housing estates blanketing the countryside.

The inconvenient truth is that most people prefer to live in stand-alone homes with a modest back yard to an apartment.

The Games are coming, and we all have to live with that inevitability and the population of Brisbane is growing as you would expect, it being reasonable to presume that no one ever seriously thought it would get smaller.

The danger inherent in the present debate is that the Games and a totally predictable population growth will be used as political cover to alter the character of the city.

Visitors to Brisbane are not going to say, “Oh look. Really tall buildings. How clever.”

They would, however, marvel at riverside parkland, low-rise development that does not overwhelm its surroundings, and the resultant ­ambience of our unique dot on the globe.

This city is our home, ladies and gentlemen.

You will be judged harshly if you fail to respect it.