urban Archives - Page 5 of 14

February 4, 2013

empty shops

One of the things that we keep on coming across on our poodlewalks in the CBD are the empty shops and offices. They seem to be everywhere we walk. Does that suggest that small business is doing it hard because consumers are not spending?

Some of the signs on the windows say that some of the small businesses are moving out of the CBD to the inner suburb, presumably due to the lower rents. I would think that others would have gone into debt and they have to sell up. The dreams become nightmares. The economy is not booming and the job opportunities are no longer abundant.

However, what I do notice is that the empty shops are not being filled with new tenants. They remain empty for long periods of time. What does that mean for the CBD’s economy? Is it structurally changing? Or are people just hanging on?

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January 10, 2013

a digital disruption

When I was walking around city west yesterday I couldn’t help but think about the digital disruption that is going to happen in the near future. This will be less from the proposed free wireless in the city and more from the National Broadband Network facilitating the digital economy.

What prompted these thoughts was the construction site of the University of South Australia’s new Learning Centre. I couldn’t help but think that many in the area have little idea of the forthcoming digital disruption.

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January 9, 2013

a momentary respite

Today Adelaide had a one day respite from the heatwave. It was actually cool enough for Ari and I to be able to drift around the western part of the CBD in comfort. I was even able to do some photography in the form of making digital snaps.

Exercising, working, or even walking at a fast pace becomes difficult to sustain at temperatures above 35ᵒC. During the heat we just sought out the shade around Veale Gardens and we moved very slowly in the shade to avoid overheating and heat stress. Fortunately, the city had cooled down over night and it was no longer a heat island. So we were able to walk the city in the late afternoon for an hour and a half.

I was looking for photographic ideas to explore. In drifting around the Hindley Street part of the CBD and then city west I was wandering around in the seedy or scruffy side of Adelaide.

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December 21, 2012

a different way of walking the city

An important aspect of poodlewalks in the city is that Ari, who loves walking the city, takes me to nooks and crannies of the city that I would normally miss. I wouldn’t even notice them as I walking too fast or I have pre-conceived ideas of what I want to photograph.

Ari’s mooching around these nooks and crannies slows me down, and it means that I am able to look more closely at what is around me, rather than just walking through the environment.

I have time to actually look as a photographer at what is there in front of me or at my feet.

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December 18, 2012

Wright St, Adelaide

I walk past this building almost everyday and I’ve been wondered how to photograph it. This photo was made early on a weekday morning around 6.30am before there was any one around. There was just a security guard collecting money from the parking meters and she was hostile. Security guards are just suspicious of photographers these days.

I also look at the beginnings of the redevelopment of an open car lot to its left along Frew Street. It is an affordable housing project. Most of the year has been taken up with digging out the contaminated soil and replacing it.

I understand that the development will done in several stages, and it will allow low and moderate income households to live in the CBD. It is part of the Council’s strategy to encourage more people to live in “a vibrant, populous and sustainable Capital City built upon Adelaide’s heritage and lifestyle”.

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December 12, 2012

Adelaide: early morning

It was my day off from the gym this morning so I went out photographing in the early morning around the Central Market Precinct from about 6.30 am to 8am. It will be about 36 degrees today and tomorrow. By 8am it already was hot and the light was very bright. The city was very quiet between 6.30-7am. People were having their morning coffees and reading newspapers at the cafe’s in Gouger St.

I was interested to see this precinct of the city in the early morning summer light, as I generally only see it in the late afternoon light.

I basically reworked familiar ground to see the difference that the early morning light made. I was pleasantly surprised. The light highlighted the modernist buildings that are emerging above the low rise nineteenth century ones.

The Adelaide CBD skyline is changing from being that of a small quaint village or just another suburb.

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December 11, 2012

Adelaide architecture

The heat has returned to Adelaide. As the temperatures are going to be in the high 30’s for the rest of the week, so our poodlewalks include carparks and streets in the CBD that deep shadows in the early evening.

The carparks give me a ariel perspective on Adelaide’s architecture and I’m finding find a lot of it rather depressing. This TAFE building,for industry, reminds me of a prison—it is actually very similar to the Remand Centre just down the road.

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December 3, 2012

urban grunge

This architectural urban decay is locked behind a fence that protects a private carpark for those working in the lawyer precinct. It is difficult to gain access to the car park because the gate is always closed and operated by a card. I was allowed in because Ari did his cute act.

The site is earmarked for development–glass tower office blocks, judging from the advertising. Nothing much is happening, even though this site is in the heart of the CBD in the central market precinct.

November 24, 2012

an errant meander in western Adelaide

I’ve started to include the western part of the city in our daily walks when I am in Adelaide.

It’s an area that is undergoing change due to the student living connected to the western campus of the University of South Australia, the state Labor government’s investment in a new public hospital and medical research facilities, and the new tramline along North Terrace to the Entertainment Centre. Is an old Adelaide disappearing, as a new cityscape emerges? A vision of a more vital Adelaide.

The real estate agents are talking of a boom. It’s early days. The empty lots, warehouses and workshops are going to be replaced by new housing developments. What sort? High rise? Medium rise? Will there be any concern for the street life? Will new cafe’s and bars spring up?

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November 22, 2012

Nth Terrace reflections

Ari and I went wandering down the west part of the CBD. I had to drop a book— Formless: a user’s guide by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss-— off at the University of South Australia library library and I wanted to scope the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute centre (SAHMRI) currently being built on Nth Terrace.

I’ve tried a few of the more conventional or modernist approaches to photographing the SAHMRI but none have worked. I’ve been frustrated by this as the restricted access to the site provides a photographer with little options.

Maybe this can help to make the shift away from a Greenbergian high modernism that emphasises “significant form,” “the autonomy of the work of art,” “pure visuality,” “transcendence,” the quest for “the essential,” etc without embracing the anti-aesthetic position of postmodernism in the arts.

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