Towards a People's Urbanism - The North Eveleigh Propositional

What kind of city would we make if we could start from scratch? If we stopped making do, tinkering at the edges. It could be anything. If we could stop worrying about what we don’t want and start creating what we do....

The Propositional aims to upend the typical process of city-making. Week by week, day by day it will publish and disseminate alternative proposal for the site at North Eveleigh. Everyone is invited to submit their ideas, agendas, their personal gripes and grand schemes. These will then be published so that others can see, share, agree or disagree, comment, critique, endorse, rework or replace them with something entirely different.

Given that the government has already approved their own scheme for the site (in the ultimate triumph of Regulator-Speculation) and are proceeding towards a quick sale, returning to the drawing board could be seen as a futile gesture. We at The Propositional strongly feel however that given the lack of critical public discourse about the future of such a significant piece of our city, a discussion of what else is possible is needed now more than ever.

The Propositional does not aim to find one perfect design, rather it seeks an accumulation of ideas, polished or rough, wild or pragmatic, heartwarming or spine-chilling, a permanently evolving catalogue of potential North Eveleighs.

We at The Propositional make no claim to represent or ‘speak for’ anyone, rather we are seeking to set up a space where people can speak for themselves, where everything is up for discussion and discussion is really the main aim.

The proposals may remain simply paper architecture, a silent witness to what could have been. But a more radical possibility exists: The proposals could go beyond polite dialogue to become a viable plan, giving us something to argue for, rather than against, something we can hold up to the spatial oligarchs, and say: ‘this is what we want! and this is how to build it..’

So let’s begin...

The Propositional Dispatch Box:

A vehicle for urban conversation: part newspaper dispenser, part post box, part writing desk, part slideshow alley gumball machine, the Propositional Dispatch Box will be placed around the North Eveleigh development site to both dispense and collect proposals for alternative visions of the North Eveleigh site.

REDWatch Note: There have been problems with a break in to the Dispatch box so participants are also being asked to email their suggestions to hugo@informalism.net You can also follow the project www.propositional.net.

You can download the First Propositional from www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/statesignificant/northeveleigh/neprop/110230prop/download  PDF 786KB,