Think outside the fence

by Stewart Sweeney

It’s time to think “outside the fence” about Adelaide’s vitality and sustainability. Do the world's great cities fence off, charge admission, destroy, and then repair their parks and squares in an endless annual cycle?

For much of the year, the current Adelaide city vitality and events model is based on fencing more and more, and ever-larger parts of your Park Lands, including the Squares.

Fences are erected, and multiple weeks are spent installing and removing infrastructure for events that last a few days to a few weeks. In many cases, admission charges from $20 to hundreds of dollars are required to enter public spaces.

Often, your Park Lands are left barren, bare, ugly and uninviting and entire ecological systems are disrupted.

One of many fenced restricted-entry events in Elder Park (Park 26)

Yet more days and weeks are then spent trying to repair the damage (behind fences!) and restore your precious public green spaces.

As this recent photo indicates, the signs of damage remain.

Fencing Victoria Square/ Tarntanyangga after dismantling the Tour Down Under village. Pic: Stewart Sweeney.

Global evidence is clear. Great cities have great parklands and squares that are rarely if ever fenced and closed to residents and visitors.

Indeed, the economic, social vitality and sustainability of the world’s great parklands and squares is supported by their 365 days a year openess to the public.

Over recent decades Adelaide might well have become the city with more of its public spaces closed by fences on more days of the year than any other city on the planet.

Fencing around Rundle Park / Kadlitpina (Park 13) for the “Garden of Unearthly Delights”. Pic: Stewart Sweeney

No wonder so many residents are inconvenienced and frustrated by our fenced city.

I see many visitors and tourists wandering around scratching their heads as they find their path blocked by yet another ugly fence and glimpse a barren wastleland in the Square at the heart of the CBD or elsewhere in your Park Lands.

Fencing Victoria Square/ Tarntanyangga after dismantling the Tour Down Under village. Pic: Stewart Sweeney.

We need to think outside the fence. Adelaide city vitality and sustainability would be better served by an alternative approach. A review of global best practice is needed to provide recommendations for change and a plan and timetable for transition to a new and better city events, vitality and sustainability model.

An immediate start should be made by requiring the bump in and bump out time of fences and infrastructure for all events to be reduced by half from the start of next year and reduced further in following years.

Adelaide is a city on the edge of a desert in an era of global warming and an annual events cycle that is based on disrupting and compromising your Open, Green, Public spaces is unsustainable and foolish. We can and must do it differently, and be better.

Temporary fencing to restrict public entry to your Gladys Elphick Park / Narnungga (Park 25)

The author of this article, Stewart Sweeney, is a long-term member of the Adelaide Park Lands Association.

He is the current “Park Guardian” for Park 11 North.