Councillor Chris Harris

In recent months there has been media attention, and many letters from concerned residents, about the plan by the City of Sydney to build a skate park on a site under the Western Distributor at Millers Point (pictured right).  This is a proposal that I wholeheartedly support, and I want to take this opportunity to explain why I hold the position I do and to hopefully allay some of the concerns that local residents have.

I support the creation of the skate park because skateboarding is a healthy, sustainable outdoor recreational pursuit, the kind of thing we should all be trying to encourage young people to partake in. It is already very popular in the City of Sydney, as shown by the numbers of skaters congregating in Martin Place, Cook and Phillip Park and in other city spaces on a weekend.  Young people use our public spaces in this way simply because the City of Sydney has failed to build dedicated skating facilities. To me this is totally understandable however I’m aware that not all the users of these areas feel the same and there is the potential for conflict.  Hence my desire to give skateboarders their own space in the CBD.  In any event, the City of Sydney has an obligation to provide free or low cost facilities for young people and I note that the City spends tens of millions of dollars each year on parks and other passive recreation facilities for every other demographic.

While there are a number of skate parks on the edges of the city already, in Glebe and Waterloo and other areas a little further afield, the majority of these are primarily bowl or ramp parks and are used for a different style of skating to what the street skaters in cities  practice.  The proposed Millers Point site would be designed with the urban terrain features that street skaters seek out and would allow them to participate in their hobby without the potential to come into conflict with pedestrians.

Three major concerns have been raised by residents about a skate park at this site, which is underneath the southern access freeway to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Firstly noise, which is a legitimate concern but which I feel many residents are more worried about than they need to be.  There are many popular skate parks in Sydney that are much bigger and much closer to residential buildings than the Millers Point skate park would be. Cammeray (pictured above) and Five Dock skate parks are two examples that immediately spring to mind and neither of these results in large numbers of noise complaints according to council staff.  These two skate parks are also located adjacent to roads much quieter than the Millers Point site – I live in one of the buildings overlooking the site and its hard to imagine that the sound of skaters would be even audible over the sound of the 160 000 cars per day that pass along the road below which the proposed park will be located.

Another concern that residents have is pedestrian safety.  However the net effect of this skate park will be to make collisions between skaters and pedestrians unlikely as it will give street skaters a dedicated place to skate that is not part of a pedestrian thoroughfare.  The park will also be located next to a dedicated cycleway running all the way from Town Hall which will give skaters easy to access the park along pedestrian-free paths.

The final concern expressed by many is that of anti-social or illegal behaviour.  This is an area where skaters are often unfairly stereotyped.  I have received many letters making statements to the effect that “while most skaters are law abiding and responsible, a number aren’t” and that because of this irresponsible minority, the park should not go ahead.  I think you will find an irresponsible minority in any group in society, but this usually doesn’t result in the entire group being branded and marginalised because of it.  For example, there has been plenty of news coverage in the last few years of violent or unsavoury behaviour by elite swimmers and football players, yet I don’t recall any incidence of residents objecting to a new pool or football field being built on the grounds of anti-social behaviour by those who use it for its intended purpose.

Graffiti is a specific example of an antisocial behaviour that many residents worry will be introduced into the area if a skate park is built.  However graffiti is not necessarily connected with skating and is fairly easy to control.  Graffiti artists generally only want to paint on relatively prominent surfaces (large walls above about waist height) and respect the work of other artists, very rarely painting on top of pre-existing artworks.  The proposed skate park will be mostly low terrain features that graffiti artists wouldn’t want to paint on and I will be suggesting that Council seek out local young artists to create innovative public artworks, consistent with the area’s usage, on the more prominent walls (as has been done with Cammeray skate park).  Perhaps a modern age Michelangelo could even paint the underside of the freeway – with the RTA’s permission of course!

The presence of skaters will actually make the area a safer place.  Currently the proposed park site is rather empty outside of peak hour and this has the potential to make it unsafe.  If the area has something to attract groups of people it will gain the benefit of passive surveillance and lose the isolated feeling that can make parts of big cities unsafe. 

I have spoken to Councillors and staff from councils that have popular skate parks, such as Waverly’s Bondi Skate Park (third image from top), Canada Bay’s Five Dock Bowl (second from bottom) and our own Fernside Park at Waterloo (below), and they report that the atmosphere around them is almost always positive.  Children as young as four, skating under the supervision of their parents, share the space with older children and teenagers and a vibrant sense of community is created.  I would suggest anyone worried about the presence of a skate park in their neighbourhood spend half an hour watching one of these places on a weekend and see for yourself how far removed they are from the noisy hubs of anti-social behaviour that some believe them to be.

So in conclusion, I will be urging City of Sydney to move forward with this project, however the park will still likely not be opened until early 2011.  Until we have decent facilities like this park in place for our young people we will continue to observe the thrills and spills of our local skaters in Martin Place and elsewhere in the city.

Thanks to skateboard.com.au for the images.

Post Script:  Shortly before I wrote this article, the local “City News” paper published a story on the plans for the skate park and the residents reaction to it, linked here.  A week later a letter from a resident critical of my position on the skate park was also published in city news here.  The following week the same paper published this response from me.