URBAN CHARACTER Case Study: Fitzroy
“It has that ‘edge’ that people are interesting, that it has a good atmosphere. It has a sort of a seedy side, a sort of an underbelly that is in a way a little bit scary, but also has a community, it has character and it has depth.”
Fitzroy is a gentrifying industrial/residential district of inner-city Melbourne with a mix of land uses, building types and heights. The local 'character' is defined by residents as a rich mix of social and architectural characteristics with a bohemian edge; a place identified by its differences and openness rather than uniformity or closure. In 2002-3 an innovative high-density housing proposal was fiercely opposed by local residents who dubbed it the 'cheesegrater'. It was primarily the height that 'grated' and was seen to violate the local 'character'. The architect/developer argued that the project was consistent with the prevailing 'character' which he labelled 'urban jazz'—inventive, transgressive, multicultural and free-form; unconstrained by neo-colonial ideology or blanket height limits. This is a case that opens up larger issues about urban intensification. To what degree does the celebration of 'character' paralyze processes of new identity formation? And to what degree can the celebration of 'character' operate as a cover for the 'creative destruction' of the market?