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Things to come at the Basin?
by Lindsay Shelton
The Transport Agency has been at pains to claim that its Basin Reserve flyover will be treated to repel graffiti, and that its surroundings will be landscaped and brightly lit. But those of us who are familiar with flyovers in other places are not persuaded.
A Wellington.Scoop reader sent us this concept of what the future could hold for the Basin, if the Transport Agency is allowed to build its flyover.
Campaigners against the flyover have been quoting international experience with similar structures:
“Flyovers are eyesore that are as outdated as their crumbling legacies suggest … The Westway flyover brought noise, crime and brutal urban blight.” – London Evening Standard, July 2012.
“Cities everywhere have been tearing down [overhead] highways … They’ve replaced them with parks and streets and neighbourhoods. It has happened from Seoul and San Francisco to Milwaukee and Madrid.” – New York Times, September 2012.
Yikes! Didn’t know it was so bad!
If they can treat flyovers to prevent graffiti, why is there so much graffiti on the rest of their motorway system?
I think it is more to the point, that if people really like something, then it will not be graffitied. Graffiti is seen as a “people’s form of protest” – the writing is on the wall, so to speak. If your building is graffitied, it has likely got elements of badness about it. Or boringness. Or blankness.
And the same goes for a flyover. Calatravas buildings, needless to say, do not get tagged – people love them. Ugly concrete flyovers however – tag-a-minute.