How have visions of Sydney shaped the city? This one-day history symposium and public lecture will explore 200 years of urban planning, from Macquarie to Moore. Prominent historians Dr Shirley Fitzgerald, Dr Grace Karskens, Professor Robert Freestone and Dr Paul Ashton will look at different eras in the city’s history, followed by an overview of the City of Sydney’s 2030 Vision by Bridget Smyth.
A Macquarie 2010 event presented in conjunction with the Historic Houses Trust. Macquarie 2010 marks the bicentenary of the beginning of Lachlan Macquarie’s 12-year tenure as the fifth governor of the colony of New South Wales.
 
Speaker biographies and abstracts.
 
Whose visions, whose interests, whose city?
Shirley Fitzgerald

There is nothing quite like a blank canvass to encourage visions. And there is nothing quite like a vision to bring about a sense of failure, as few visions ever triumph undiluted.
Visionaries are not always who you might think, and forward looking ideas can come from unexpected sources. 

While acknowledging the contribution of high profile visionaries such as Macquarie or Bradfield, and the concerted efforts of those who contributed to significant enquiries and plans, we also need to explore the mechanisms of how the visions and ideas of ordinary citizens are transmitted and integrated into the public dialogue concerning the future of the city.

Democratic processes challenge professionalism, and ordinary voices can easily be drowned out of the discussion. When plans have been implemented, these are then positioned as ‘the vision’, while other defeated scenarios are consigned to the bin. By revisiting some of the plans that died on the drawing board and proposals that were never seriously investigated at the time, a range of possibilities for future action emerge.

Shirley Fitzgerald is Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney and is best known for her role as City Historian for the City of Sydney, 1987 – 2009. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australian Historical Society, a life member of the History Council of NSW and has been awarded a Centenary Medal for services to history and heritage. Shirley has produced many publications and other historical productions on the history of Sydney.

Governor Macquarie and the Public Good: Civic Virtue and Lived Space in the Macquaries’ Sydney
Grace Karskens

Lachlan Macquarie served as the fifth governor of New South Wales for twelve years, between 1810 and 1822, far longer than any of his predecessors. Along with Arthur Phillip, he is the best known and most revered of the colonial governors. In the search for national history, origins and father-figures over the twentieth century, Macquarie morphed from ‘The Last Tyrant’ to the ‘Father of Australia’. Autocratic behaviour became wisdom; obsession with building became a vision of nationhood.

These buildings and improvements are generally seen as philanthropic, embodying Governor Macquarie’s noble and far-sighted commitment to civic virtue and the public good. Yet these narratives did not obliterate or silence other histories of town-making and urban experience, any more than the Macquaries’ visions wiped out what was already established in Sydney. This paper will revisit three of the most famous Macquarie improvements: the Domain, the Rum Hospital and Hyde Park Barracks, to see how the new places were contested, negotiated and used by Sydney’s people themselves. We can also explore the connections between these ‘public works’ and the idea of the ‘common good’. Whose good did these places and structures really serve?

Grace Karskens teaches history in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales.  She is interested in social, cultural and urban history, material culture and environmental history. Her most recent book, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney was published by Allen & Unwin in 2009. Grace is a Trustee of the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.

Editing Edwardian Sydney: The 1908-09 Royal Commission
Robert Freestone

Early twentieth century visions of Sydney looked to corrective surgery rather than radical restructuring to facilitate the inexorable drive to growth and prosperity. An aestheticized utility rather than transformative utopian ideals ruled as a babble of voices proffered ideas for city improvement. Public discussion reached its apogee in the Royal Commission for the Improvement of Sydney and Its Suburbs in 1908-09. This forum afforded the opportunity to compare and contrast all manner of proposals to address the ‘metropolitan muddle’. A connection to the north shore, reconstruction of Circular Quay, a city underground railway, redevelopment of the Rocks, major civic spaces for central Sydney, playgrounds for the inner city, parkland for the outer suburbs, development of major public buildings, slum clearance, numerous suggestions for new and widened roads, and greater powers over building design all coursed their way through the deliberations of the Commission.  The journal Building characterized the Commission’s final report as the ‘editing’ of a city.

The description seems remarkably apposite. Eschewing a ‘formal’ or ‘symmetrical’ plan, it opted for individual recommendations on ‘practical issues’: traffic and transport, beautification, slum areas and housing reform, and future urban growth. It was a timely but predictably diffuse stocktake which produced a long-term schedule of public works but within a few years calls for more action, and vision, would inevitably return.

Robert Freestone is Professor of Planning and Urban Development at the University of New South Wales. He is a past president of the International Planning History Society. His books include Model Communities (1989), Spirited Cities (1994), The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (2000, with Stephen Hamnett), Designing Australia’s Cities (2007), Florence Taylor’s Hats (2008, with Bronwyn Hanna), Cities, Citizens and Environmental Reform (1909) and Urban Nation: Australia’s Planning Heritage (2010).

Tunnel Vision: The Cahill Expressway and Sydney’s Planning
Paul Ashton

Planning in Sydney between World War I and World War II lost both direction and momentum. The visions of many aesthetes were overturned by brutal practicalities. Nowhere was this more starkly symbolised than in the fitful construction of the Cahill Expressway on which this paper will focus.
Most people today think that the Cahill expressway is a monstrosity. Cheers erupt every time someone suggest pulling it down. But when it was opened on 24 March 1958 many Sydneysiders hailed it as a symbol of progress, that irrepressible Victorian ideology that promised to deliver material prosperity to many but eventually failed to do so. When the extension of the expressway to Woolloomooloo became operational on 1 March 1962, photographer John Mulligan portrayed the new tunnel as a victory of modern sensibilities and technology.

Artefacts such as the Cahill can also shed light on aspects of our political culture. When, for example, Joe Cahill commented at its opening that the expressway ‘could be called a triumph of democratic planning, in so far as citizens and leading experts were consulted as to the ultimate design’ he was misrepresenting the past. Commencing in 1923, dogged by conflict and bemusing to many observers, the design and execution of the Cahill Expressway was telling of the fraught and fickle politics of town planning in Sydney.

Paul Ashton is Associate Professor of Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Public History and editor of the journal Public History Review. His publications include The Accidental City: Planning Sydney Since 1788.

The Visions of Sydney symposium is sponsored by the City of Sydney.