IOII.003 Planes

Lately I’ve been noticing a series of small planes around central New Plymouth. Not the airborne type, or the woodworking type, but the spatial type – architectural to be more specific. Although in this case I think they’re more a factor of architectural oversight.

For example, there’s a fire escape coming out of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery that has resulted in a small – less than a metre square I’d estimate – vertical plane interrupting the roof of a neighbouring cafe. Atop the former White Hart Public Bar is another – this on a 45 degree angle. The Vero building has a former signage box that is now plain white, looming over the pavement four stories up. These are generally exterior concessions to interior function – bastions of what Douglas Coupland calls the Emperors New Mall – where the inside of the building is intricately designed at the expense of the exterior.

So why don’t we highlight and celebrate these tiny spaces? I propose identifying half a dozen or so and painting them high-gloss gold.

Why gold? Gold is the colour of winners, and 2008 New Plymouth was judged the world’s best small city and the best place to live in New Zealand, despite these architectural anomalies.

Gold also sits alongside the impending Len Lye Centre, with its epicly reflective stainless steel shell, echoing the precious metal facade and reflecting it on a number of buildings throughout the city. It has the capacity to tidy up tired buildings, establish a connect-the-dots tourism trail, take on countercultural iconography (I'm thinking of the Invader tile pieces around the world) or at the very least make people say “Huh?”

And really, what more could we ask of our city’s building stock?

IOII.002 Good As Gold

In meeting the mandate of what might be considered his primary constituency, Rt Hon Winston Peters introduced the SuperGold card in November 2006, offering free discounts and concessions to all New Zealanders aged 65 and over, or receiving NZ Superannuation or a Veteran’s Pension. According to its website, it is “Super convenient.”

One of the most visible outcomes of the card at a local level has been the introduction of free parking in New Plymouth District Council car parks, up until 11am on all metered days (Monday to Saturday).

It’s a great initiative, targeted at a group of residents who (and I generalise here) are on fixed incomes and may not have the funds for parking meters or the (again, I generalise) mobility to park in the outlying free car parks and walk in to the shops they need to visit.

It’s also a generous concession on the part of the council, whose holistic approach to CBD parking tends to be on lifting cost to shift behaviour towards greater uptake of shared and sustainable transport, and to discourage long-term parking in centralised metered spots.

It could also be noted that the most vocal opponents to council spending has in recent years been the Grey Power lobby. One could suppose that retirement frees up time to keep a closer eye on the council, its happenings and spending, and that a fixed income provides the inclination.

But when it comes to CBD accessibility, are we putting all our eggs in one basket, and is this the wrong basket?

I'd liek to propse that a similar privilege is afforded to new mothers. If the over 65s are permitted free parking presumably on the virtues of fixed income and mobility challenges, then surely mothers with a child or children under say 3 and requiring push chair support also tick this box.

Some businesses are already cottoning on to the challenges faced by mothers, and the value. Main street retailers should be embracing this with open arms. Whereas conventional wisdom asserts that retired people generally spend less, this isn’t an option with small children, whose insatiable thirst for nappies and knowledge, and equally high turnover of clothing, requires constant investment.

Working parents might protest, but they have the comparative luxury of a dual income, and based on a day-care model, are unencumbered by the challenges of moving everywhere with small children during retail hours.

SuperGold cardholders might protest, fearing competition for their free parks, and an erosion of their exclusive SuperGold privileges and status as sole deservers of those privileges. And the Council too, might protest, fearing the loss of an income stream. But a cursory glance down our main street this morning would suggest extending this to another group of our community who are facing a challenge won’t rock the boat too much.

The majority of parks are empty, with passenger vehicles being well outnumbered by corporate and delivery vehicles. As the urban areas of the world search for the answers to the perennial question of what makes a city attractive for lifestyle and investment, the time might well have come for a family-friendly initiative like this.

Oh and look, it's local government election year.

IOII.001 Taming traffic islands

Throughout New Plymouth’s inner-city streets are a number of flat white traffic islands. Generally in a state of disrepair – flaking dirty paint, rough finish, weeds around the edges - they do little to draw attention to the fact that they’re marking a potential killing field.

As a regular cyclist past, over and around many such islands, I’ve come up with an idea to both draw attention to them and what they’re there to do and, with the aid of a little subtle humour, get people to pay behave a little more respectably around these traffic islands.

To digress for a moment, in 1970s non trade-liberalised New Zealand, or at least my hazy youthful recollection of it, there were apparently about 3 different types of carpet on offer. The one that’s seared in my mind is a sort of red and gold floral number. Axminster, I believe. It adorned the floor of my father’s shop for over a decade and can still be found in unexpected commercial and retail locations around our nation – namely Chinese restaurants in my recent experience. 

To me, that vivid blood red carpet with its varying hues of gold and black screams two things. The first is a sort of muted 1970s opulence, hope, a fin-de-siecle grandeur as the floodgates of consumer opportunity started to heave under looming spectre of globalism.

But it also speaks of cosseted childhood, of the safety of beige-tinted domestic bliss, and the broadly-held belief that everything was going to be okay. 

So why not merge the two, and cover the faded white traffic islands with a red and gold fiesta of hope. It’ll draw more attention to the fact it’s an intersection, and it might just trigger enough childhood nostalgia to get people to stop and exhibit a bit of patience. 

As a bonus it might even remind drivers that bloodshed could happen at any moment, and hide the stains when another cyclist loses some skin. 

I’ve even found a local source of the carpet (a Chinese restaurant, as it happens). Now to get it photographed and printed onto weatherproof vinyl...

IOII: The Institute of Interesting Ideas

"Maybe a thought is like a virus, you know, it can kill all the healthy thoughts and just take over. That would be serious."

- Mark Hunter in Pump Up the Volume (1990) 

Ideas, in my experience, are a bit the same. You can cling to them without fully testing them, a bit like the dream of owning a Lamborghini, until you realise it won't fit your family of four. 

A while ago I read Scott Belsky's book Making Ideas Happen. It's a good read - neatly summarised here - but on finishing it I didn't manage to start progressing the endless stream of ideas bouncing around in my head. 

This blog is in part a response to both those points. 

This blog is in part a whiteboard to capture ideas as they come along. 

Maybe it'll prompt me to organise, assess, expand and progress them. 

Hopefully it'll be a public forum that'll hold me accountable for converting more ideas into actual things. 

Ideally it'll turn me into doer of remarkable things, and the place I live a whole lot better. 

At the very least I'll be blogging again.