Inner urban conservation and development - An independent panel report on a proposal for Smith Street, Collingwood, under Melbourne 2030. Edited by Miles Lewis, August 2004. Info + Order your copy
Planning battle goes on-line @ www.smithstreet.org
The Collingwood Action Group (CAG) today launched its Smith Street website as part of a community campaign to fight a massive, mixed-use development proposed for a large block on Smith Street, Collingwood.
Local MP, Richard Wynne – on record as opposing the proposal – officially launched the website. Wynne has been supporting locals in their fight and his stance against the development is widely known among the community.
Local graphic designer and member of CAG’s communications group, Ms Robyn Zwar, said that websites were vital to today’s community campaigns. While the proposed development was on the Collingwood side of the Street, Ms Zwar said that naming the site ‘Smith Street’ symbolised its role as a link between the Fitzroy and Collingwood communities.
According to Ms Zwar, staging the launch in Sonsa, Smith Street’s popular Turkish wholesale food store, was a natural choice for the Collingwood Action Group. Sonsa is on the site earmarked for demolition if Council approves the planning application. It is feared that niche stores like these will be forced out by the proposed shopping mall and supermarket, killing off the retail diversity that is a major part of Smith Street’s attraction.
The website is designed and hosted by Toy Satellite, established in Fitzroy in 1995 by local media artists Andrew Garton and Justina Curtis. Mr Garton says that ‘the village atmosphere of Smith Street and its diversity, where culture is enriched by retail in service to the community, first drew Toy Satellite to the neighbourhood’. Toy Satellite worked closely with CAG to create a site that doubles as a campaign vehicle, the focus now, and embraces the Street’s broader community. CAG and Toy Satellite hope the site will provoke debate among locals and the planning community about links between inappropriate inner-city development and the erosion of neighbourhood character.
Collingwood Action Group urges people to visit www.smithstreet.org to learn more about the proposed development and what they can do help get development right for Smith Street.
FOR MEDIA COMMENT:
Local Member for Richmond, Richard Wynne MP ph 9429 1813
Collingwood Action Group, Dominik Kucera ph 0409 145 638
City of Yarra Ward Councillor, Deborah Di Natale ph 0418 179 667
Toy Satellite, Andrew Garton, Ph 0409 948 280 (and below)
CONCERNED COMMUNITY MEMBERS CAN:
‘Activate their voice’ by visiting the Smith Street website at www.smithstreet.org and emailing a letter of protest to decision-makers.
About Toy Satellite and their view of Smith Street
It could be said that the last bastion of Melbourne's bohemia is Smith Street, surrounded by factories and warehouses and government housing estates. Here is inner-Melbourne in its ethnic diversity. We have all, newer communities mixing with the original owners, Aboriginals, old time residents and newcomers, artists, shoppers, footy fans and the ebb and flow of the commuter traffic taking sweet tea at Sonsa's or a spanakopita at Mellisa's, having their shoes repaired or checking out the finest selection of meats in Melbourne. Smith Street is a village and it's this diversity, where culture is enriched and mutually sustained by retail service, that drew Toy Satellite founders, Justina Curtis and Andrew Garton to the neighbourhood.
Justina and Andrew established Toy Satellite and its sister web-hosting service, c2o, in Fitzroy in 1995. They've been running their media arts activities in and around Smith Street since they opened their first studio there in 1997.
SmithStreet.org is one of a string of Toy Satellite projects that is concerned with the recording of public memory, in particular where the population intersects with commerce and the pressures that are brought to bear on governments that need to care for, support, educate and feed their ever growing constituencies.
Says Andrew of this web site, "SmithStreet.org is not only about alerting the community to how unabated development can consume, rather than serve, it is a public record of what has been, what is and what will become - an ongoing community narrative that may aid in identifying the legacies we leave each other, those that have been left and those that are yet to be realised."
Toy Satellite and c2o are committed to the community of Smith Street.
YOU CAN VISIT TOY SATELLITE AND c2o HOSTING AT:
Toy Satellite
www.toysatellite.org
c2o Hosting
www.c2o.org
Posted by Editor