Outrageous?

Yes, But It

Could Happen

To You!

Some of the pleasant tree lined streets of the city of Suva could make the city a laughing stock among visitors from Aus tralia.

LIVE trees in the main streets?”, they may say. “How provincial can you get?”

As the lower photograph of Suva shows, Suva hasn’t caught up with the urbanisation that has overtaken more advanced cities such as Sydney, some of whose charms may be seen in the top photograph.

But there are hopes.

Australians point out that in less than 200 years they have been able to bulldoze, blast and obliterate beauty spots to an extent where they are barely recognisable; turn some of the finest natural harbours and beaches in the world into dirty strips of sand at the foot of jostling red brick suburbs, and festoon the whole with forests of dead trees carrying power lines and transformers, inter spersed with rusting street signs, garish hoardings, and flimsy bush carpenter shelters.

Suva, and Noumea, Rabaul and Apia, have still time enough to achieve similar results, so long as

their citizens are prepared to look the other way when the local bureaucrats decide to erect another signpost or another building.

The brilliant Australian accomplish ment is explained in Australian Outrage, by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, which calls it. “the decay of a visual environ

merit”, and makes a plea for greater public awareness and action against the disfigurement that is increasing each year.

The book, which is edited by Donald Gazzard, with a foreword by J. D. Pringle, points out that much of the harm is done by indifferent local authorities, such as councils.

This is permitted by a public which is apathetic to what is being done in its name.

There are some encouraging signs.

In Sydney the Department of Main Roads has allocated funds for the landscaping of areas adjoining new expressways, instead of leaving scarred rockfaces and rubble as a reminder of their passing, and the local electricity authority has agreed to place electric mains underground in some heavily built-up areas.

But there is a long way to go before a civic consciousness and an eye for aesthetic appeal is instilled in developers, advertisers and civic authorities, who all too often seem to say, “Show me a beauty spot and I’ll erect a fine public toilet”.

Port Moresby already shows signs of the urban blight; the warning seems clear to Suva and other growing South Pacific centres.—Rob W.

<Australian Outrage. Ure Smith.

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