Blog upgrade joy!
Wow, that was easy.
Having become fed up with the comment spam that this blog has been drawing, I just upgraded to the new(er) version of WordPress, which features superior comment spam protection out of the box. I don’t know why I was afraid of upgrading, it was so amazingly simple …
On an entirely unrelated note: although I think it’s cool that there’s lots of new planned developments happening around Perth, some of the people behind them deserve to be whacked over the head for squandering good opportunities. Examples are the planned ‘town centre’ at Cockburn Central, and the new waterfront development at Fremantle Harbour. So I decided to send my local council and the waterfront developers two (admittedly rather lefty) rants.
I’m having trouble loading the Cockburn Central site, but your correspondence with the council suggests that the planners are making the same mistake that was made with Joondalup. To wit: placing a shopping centre right next to the CBD will suck the life out of the CBD–everybody frequents the shopping centre and the CBD itself becomes a ghost town. (Imagine what would happen if a major shopping centre was constructed right next to Perth CBD.)
It’s happened to Joondalup and it will happen to Cockburn Central.
cockburncentral.com.au redirects here, which I’m loathe to link to. State Government using the cheapest web-dev firm they can find, yo.
All in all, I think you’re right on the money. But the dynamics at Cockburn are a bit different (the shopping centre is a bit of a walk from the new traino, not right on top of it) and if the new football stadium is built there, it’ll be interesting to see how that influences things.
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