NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong has represented the seat of Newtown since its introduction in 2015, and it is exactly what you would expect from a Greens electorate. The area is described by Anthony Green as the state’s “newest, smallest and funkiest electorate”.
Newtown has a particular feel about it, and in response to concerns about the electorate’s safety and character, Leong — in conjunction with the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, Newtown Precinct Business Association and ACON health LTD — is holding a “protecting the Newtown Vibe” (yes, “vibe” is capitalised in the Newtown context, apparently) community meeting tomorrow night. She has also put out a community survey polling constituents on threats to this Newtown Vibe. It is a follow-up to the meeting of the same name back in June 2015. Attendees will be hearing what Vibe protection measures have been implemented since then, and “hear results of the Community Survey re the Vibe.”
Ms Tips will be interested to see how many of the suggestions put forward by the public during the first meeting have been implemented. Alongside calls for better and more visible policing and community organisations partnering with pubs to create a more inclusive atmosphere, there were calls for the decriminalising of street theatre (“Street theatre is invisible in Sydney, and so presumably against the law. Laws can be changed.”) and making all bouncers female. Personally, though, we think the attendee who wrote “violent responses should not be dismissed. The failure of liberalism requires us to ‘suspend’ its frameworks, and to abandon ‘law and order'” might be disappointed. Will this forum also decide to ban music videos filmed by Coldplay?
The single biggest thing that will stand to affect the “vibe” of Newtown is trucking a dirty, great big highway called the Westconnex through King Street, aka “Vibe central”.
The final stage of the Westconex will go under Newtown and Enmore, theoretically at least (provided the RMS and Council can prevent rat-running toll avoiders) removing most of the heavy through traffic from the surface.
Karen, go and ask the residents of Surry Hills and the Danks St precinct if they’d prefer all the Eastern Distributor traffic still roaring down Bourke Sat and up Crown ? It used in the 90s when I worked there. It was a horrible, traffic blasted nightmare with boarded up shops and derelicts sleeping in the alleys. Now its full of tree-lined gentrified streets with art galleries, weird and wonderful shops, cafes and (sigh) hipsters – and the “funkiest” vibe outside of (ha!) Newtown…
I live in neighbouring Alexandria and I’m willing to take a wait and see approach regarding Westconnex. At the end of the day King Street is already a parking lot. It could hardly be any worse.
Ditto, I’m on king st. I’m open to, but not convinced of, the theory that this might make king st a little more bearable.
Regarding the vibe of newtown: I haven’t been here forever, but it has been “feeling” more and more threatening at night. Sorry I can’t quantify/define a feeling?
I lived in Newtown for a bit around 2013, and then moved to Glebe. Both are incredibly gentrified, but I think Glebe is more or less equal part ghetto scumbag and millionaire. On my street there are renters and owners on one end, and housos down the other. Good times.
Yes Mathew, Ive watched the gentrification of Newtown with a mixture of alarm and glee (those house price!!) for a about 10 years now. There’s absolutely no chance of its old “vibe” surviving – that changes as soon as the new gentry (Guy Rundle’s beloved “knowledge class”) move in with their plans to turn their “humble workingman’s cottages” into gleaming mini-McMansions, start voting for Jenny Leong from the Greens, and obsessing about threats to their house prices (noisy pubs and venues, outsiders and anyone except them building anything at all).
My son, who is a lawyer, also lives in Enmore now. “The problem with Newtown now,” he told me, “is that people like me live here.”