The ACT Government and the National Capital Authority have put up a long-term proposal to create a gateway to Canberra on Northbourne Avenue with up to six tower blocks at the intersection with Antill and Mouat Streets and Wakefield and Macarthur Avenues.
Residents and the professor of landscape architecture and the University of Canberra, Ken Taylor, immediately condemned the idea. The Act Government then stressed that is was a very long-term plan.
The idea has several critical drawbacks. The main one is that it runs contrary to perhaps the most important feature of Canberra — that the built landscape does not obliterate the natural landscape. It means that views to the unbuilt hilltops must be preserved. It means that the height of buildings should be limited.
Canberra need not be and should not be just like every other city. It is unique. Canberrans, and the nation as a whole should be proud of that and preserve it. Putting up some large tower blocks for offices and residences is hardly imaginative planning or even good land use. It seems more like a short-term idea for someone to make some fast bucks close to the city, rather than the creation of a gateway. Northbourne Avenue, with its beautiful eucalypts is already a splendid enough gateway. Most over-built cities can only dream of such a gateway. The tower blocks will only unnecessarily add to traffic congestion that will get worse as Gungahlin grows.
Of equal concern is the fact that the NCA proposed less than two years ago an excellent idea for a gateway to Canberra. Traffic would be brought off the Federal Highway and along Majura Avenue cutting through the bush on the west of Duntroon over the crest to come to the splendid vista at the eastern point of the Triangle looking along Kings Avenue to Parliament House.
That idea had vision. It was planning. Putting up tower blocks is just building.