Housing Action for Sydney Council

A broad left group has emerged to contest the upcoming local government election on Sept 8. The group is called Housing Action.

Progressive activists of various stripes have come together to raise important issues, in particular public housing, public transport and corporate overdevelopment.

I was approached to join in, and I thought the cause was worthwhile, so I did. Personally, I've been heavily involved in Friends of Erskineville, and my areas of interest have been overdevelopment of Ashmore estate, public transport, pushing for more cycling, parks, community facilities, childcare and preschools. Public housing tenants, private renters and the homeless are under great stress and I believe resident groups should work together and get behind them as I believe there is common ground there and it can bring greater breadth and depth to our collective campaigns.

Housing Action believes that Sydney needs a fighting council. One that will stand up for us and activate the community to push for the action we really need.

If you support our aims, I hope you'll be able to help out in some way, and if you are a voter in the City of Sydney, vote for us too.

Check out the website for more info:
http://www.housingactionsydney.org/

Thanks,
Andrew Chuter
achuter at gmail.com

development and ethics

How different might our built environment be if developers and politicians, you know, acted, like, ethically and stuff?
https://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/2011-utzon-lecture-series-peter-singer-building-values

Ashmore public meeting

A hugely successful meeting tonight in Erskineville Town Hall. About 200 attendees. Councillors Doutney and Bergman in attendance and John Davies and Andrew Thomas from the City of Sydney.

A number of resolutions were passed strongly opposing the City's plan for 9 storey buildings.

Thanks to everyone who attended.

This map may look ridiculous, that's because it is. But it is also the truth. Each car icon, including the smallest ones, represents 5 cars that will have to be parked on street.

In the Glo building where I live, which is entirely representative of new developments in the Ashmore precinct, there are 91 apartments. We have 97 parking spaces made up of 82 resident, 13 visitor and 2 disabled spots. The demand for parking is so high that despite 90% of our apartments having their own space, and many signs and warnings indicating that residents must not park in visitor spaces, quite a few still do. This leads to the visitor parking being full on occassion, so some visitors must park on-street. Some residents with two cars pay over $200 per month for a car space. This problem is the direct result of an underprovision of parking, and indirectly an underprovision of public transport and other options.

It all takes significant resources of the strata committee to monitor and police. It often leads to violation notices being served. The point however is that average car ownership rates in the area clearly must be at least 0.9 cars per apartment.

The parking allocation for the amended Ashmore DCP is around 0.65 spaces per apartment. Even if this included no visitor parking at all, with 3250 new apartments, this would mean about 1000 new resident cars would need to be parked on street every night. I have put about 200 car icons on the above graphic, hence the figure of 5 real cars for every car icon.

I've learnt from all this that car usage is not the same as car ownership.  I have a family of 4, I ride a bike to work and we all walk a lot; we drive only 5000km a year, less than half the state average. But of course we still need and own a car. It has to be parked somewhere.

Do the math, Clover & Barry. 

Andrew Chuter

Erko resident, maths teacher & voter

Act now to save Erskineville from Crashmore Estate

Make you voice heard by sending an email to ashmore@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

Comments on the plan close on January 30, 2012.

The City's website for Crashmore is here:
Ashmore Precinct

What is Crashmore Estate?

Crashmore Estate (aka Ashmore Estate) is a choice bit of industrial land in the heart of Erskineville/Alexandria. It's going to be developed into apartments.

Greedy developers such as Goodman and Leighton Properties have used their political influence ($$$ to Kenneally & O'Farrell) and now the City of Sydney has put forward a new plan to radically overdevelop the site.

The existing plan wasn't too bad, the maximum building heights were 5 storeys. But the new plan tops out at 9 storeys and will DOUBLE the total population of Erskineville!

3000 new apartments
6000 new residents
How many new cars ????
How many new trains & buses ????
How many new schools, hospitals, post offices ????

What's up Clover? There's an election around the corner, we can CrashMoore too.

This is a big turd dropped on all of us who live and pass through here.

But we are strong and together we will defeat this thing. Erskinevillians have long memories of past successes and a green bans park to remind us.

Email your thoughts to ashmore@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au