I don’t want to live in Gotham City

It's time for change, Gold Coast!

“I love New York, but I don’t want to live there!” said mayoral candidate Mona Hecke at a meeting arranged by the Community Alliance in Palm Beach. “And I’m not alone on this issue. Most questions from the large crowd of residents last night related to the design of the highrise buildings that has emerged in recent years.”

“Tall buildings can be beautiful, and most of our developers have been doing them well for over 50 years. in recent years. The recent trend for new building forms is foreign to the Gold Coast.” A distinctive style of slender buildings in garden settings emerged in the 1970s. The Gold Coast grew with a resort-city character like Miami and Honolulu. It’s quite different from big business cities like New York and the central business districts of our own state capitals.

“The new buildings rising in our midst are like Gotham City, a reference that was repeated in questions at the meeting last night. In many instances its not specifically the height that residents protest about. The thing they most dislike is the density which cumulatively overwhelms neighbourhoods.”

Residents from Palm Beach, Broadbeach and Main Beach talked of their suburbs turning into concrete jungles. Redevelopment sites are tiny, and the buildings cover so much of the land that there’s hardly any space left over for landscaping. Standard setbacks are being ignored and the separation between buildings is inadequate. In some places, residents can forget sunshine, they are lucky if they can still see the sky. And there is never enough car parking, so the streets are filled with local residents’ cars – and beachgoers from elsewhere find it more difficult to access the beaches.

Mona Hecke said “the meeting was called to help people to understand the council’s proposed changes to the City Plan, but it was clear that many community concerns could be resolved if the council would simply require adherence to the intent and Acceptable Outcomes described in the existing design code.”

Residents are upset about excessive relaxations and mystified by the council’s justification for some development approvals.

“I’m putting my hand up to be the next Gold Coast Mayor. One of the first changes I will instigate is to ensure that council is responsible and committed to faithful implementation of our own “rule book”. To ignore the City Plan is like shooting ourselves in the foot. We need to accommodate growth through higher residential densities, and new buildings must be of high quality to maintain and enhance our urban amenity. For the community to accept and embrace change, we must regain greater certainty in our development assessment process.

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