PROGRESS = forward movement towards a destination.
STRATEGICALLY TOWARDS WHAT DESTINATION?
WITH = accompanied by
PRUDENCE = the quality of cautiousness.
STRATEGICALLY IN A HOUSING CRISIS HOW PROGRESSIVE
OR CAUTIOUS IS IT DEMOLISH A DWELLING & POSSIBLY
CONSIGN THE INVESTED RESOURCES TO LANDFILL?
THE TREVALLYNhouse
A HOUSE OWNED BY THE COMMUNITY AND MANAGED
BY THE CITY OF LAUNCESTON COUNCIL
With the demolition of this dwelling what:
- Social dividends or deficits does the decision deliver?
- Under SECTION 65 what 'professional advice' was on offer and supplied by whom in what context?
- Purposeful strategic imperatives are in play relative to 'resource recovery" appropriate land use and cultural landscaping?
- Consideration has been given to 'the place's' Community of Ownership and Interest's values, obligations & right's in a 21st C context?
FEASIBLY, the resources invested in this building could be reconfigured to provide MICROaccommodation for 9 or 10 people. In a housing crisis it is social delinquency and fiscal folly NOT to interrogate the options and opportunities to deliver an outcome that fits the circumstance and pays attention to the housing crisis, and the need for housing that is clear and present.
Moreover,IF ONcycled and resources from elsewhere were to be added then feasibly every last kilo of the resource in this structure could be strategically and economically ONcycled to possibly create a demonstration of autonomous MACRO-CUM-MICRO community ‘dwellings’. As a consequence of decades of Council failing to maintain this community asset appropriately the city's managers and functionaries along with its elected representatives are now faced with making decisions in dystopian circumstances.
“Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath” ... Kameron Hurley,
Council's management has a record of working on the premise that ‘ratepayers are not investors and do not need to make a profit’. That’s the premise that reportedly underpinned the Council's investment in the Birchalls Building. While there is a modicum of truth in that ‘assertion’, ratepayers nonetheless pay rates in order to receive SOCIALdividends – and here with this ‘dwelling's’ appropriate management there are social dividends to be had!!
However, IF the BUREAUCRATIC door is slammed shut, and tightly, then the STATUSquo will prevail as might the dystopia it harbours. Nonetheless, the door might not be shut and IF so, either an Expression of Interest or submissions from interested parties (with deep pocket presumably) might yet wrest this house from what has all the hallmarks of a bureaucracy's failings –and arguably its dereliction of duty as well.
Questions arise regarding the veracity of the assertions made in the report to Councillors. 'In business and academe’ such assertions are characterised as ‘truth by assertion’ and once tested they typically fall over. At the most basic level IF Council as an entity lacks the business acumen to deliver a ‘dividend’ (final or social)and this ‘home’ would feasibly fetch something in the order of $600K as is. That being so the fiscal dividends should NOT be absorbed into general revenue and the funds raised might well be put to work elsewhere – ideally relieving housing stress in the jurisdiction.
On the face of it, this determination by Council poses serious questions for ratepayers and especially so given what appears to be forfeited for the seeming lack of strategic thinking that appears to leave ratepayers and HOMEseekers in less than a favourable position at a time such the present. It is most concerning that 'Council' arrived at position that reportedly has been arrived at:
• ...Without serious engagement with this 'building's' Community of Ownership & Interest; or
• ...Indeed the ratepayers' elected representatives (AKA Councillors); AND
• ...In isolation and without reference to Council's strategic planners – splendid isolation insulated from community placemaking aspirations.
It has been said that the elected representatives, on the evidence, have abdicated their governance role to management. To the extent that might be a sustainable proposition, it seems to have trickled down into 'management' where the hierarchical paradigm gets translated into SILOthinking – asset managers operate in isolation from strategic planners apparently in this case.
Arguably, a significant factor in all this is Councils ongoing reluctance to employ an architect that would enable Council to work collaboratively and cooperatively in its placemaking towards better outcomes and the fulfilment of community aspirations and expectations. Almost no architectural project has been realised without the designer's collaboration with those who realise the concept relative to place.
In addition, the figures estimated for the cost of renovation and demolition need to be interrogated as people in 'THE INDUSTRY' are saying that they are inflated and unrealistic and Council's record in such matters leaves much to be desired given that 'management' tends to operate in an architectural vacuum.
This structure on 62 Gorge Rd.is NOT RUBBISH albeit that the decision making might well be considered in that way! Moreover, the community needs more than an opportunity to realise the implausible or entertain a hope that "a person with the right appetite and deep enough pockets [comes along]."Nothing's impossible," Mr Pfeiffer professional HOUSEmover.
"The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable." ... James Surowiecki ... "That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable." ... Aristotle
IN CONCLUSION:
Given Council's disengagement with this building's Community of Ownership and Interest as well as ratepayers' investment of in 62 Gorge Rd. Trevallyn, it is clear that Council over time has erred, and often – and again now in a determination made in isolation – it is appropriate that the community has an opportunity to express its interests in the forward planning for a 'place' – and its' placedness'.
That is their interest in the possibility of achieving the implausible. A community's interest is playing its part in CULTURALlandscaping.
More to the point, it is now quite clear that the community's elected representatives have been left out the equation until the very last. Also, the on the available evidence the determination 'to demolish' was made well away from 'strategic planning' concerns and strategic 'purposefulness.
Arguably, all this can be charactorised as administrative dysfunctionalism and in that context concern citizens ought not be expected to allow this kind of mindset to pass unchallenged an uncontested.
Almost inevitably, the question hanging here might well be ... IS THIS the fraction that represents the whole?
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
https://www.realestate.com.au/property/my-property/details/15173236
WATCH THIS SPACE
Moriyama house is located in Ohta-ku, a residential area in the center of Tokyo dotted with single-family houses and midsize apartment blocks, placed orderly on a traditional urban pattern that preserves a typically Japanese atmosphere. Drawing inspiration from the extremely fragmented fabric of the capital – a reflection of its fast-paced growth –, the house reinvents the traditional concept of the Japanese dwelling by distributing, on a 290 square meter plot, a group of independent volumes that include the dwelling of the owner and, temporarily, five rental apartments.
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