Albany - I die a little every time

[tieke]

This is the third time I have stayed in Albany. Each time I become appalled and depressed. There's something about Albany that I find utterly soul destroying. It feels empty, devoid of a soul, it is a vacuum. And I'm trying to work out what's wrong with it (or with me

Comments

[rivet]

I am a city kid, through and through. Places like that give me the creeps. There was a famous criticism of Oakland: Gertrude Stein said "there's no THERE there." It applies to this case.

[tieke]

Yeah, Albany reminds me of a lot of suburbs I've been through in the States. Complete with strip malls, etc. I feel like I've travelled across the world, not like I'm still in NZ.

Albany

[edm]

The main problem with Albany, from my point of view, is that it isn't walkable.[0] It's entirely planned around an N car family. This leads to, eg, things being "conveniently located" just off a particular major road/motorway exit. Vast distances (by foot) from, eg, public transport or anything else you'd want to visit

Re: Albany

[tieke]

Yeah, I completely agree re. all of this - especially the design for cars thing. Then again, it only took me 10 minutes to get to the shops on foot last night ... but it was such a different walk to the 9 minutes between our section and Brooklyn village. So I started to feel that there is more to it.

I love your alien analogy! What I wonder about is why people choose to live here, and choose to do so in sufficient numbers that the housing isn't super-cheap. I could speculate that people just don't know any better, but I suspect that this is a simplistic and patronising view, and that in reality people do actually make informed decisions about living here. And then I wonder if it is a symptom of the whole hyper-reductionist western way of thinking - we accept and value this as a way of living; we think that ticking boxes is all there is to it ... and then I go OMG what are we doing to ourselves ... and it gets really depressing!

Re: Albany

[edm]

The difference in the walk is that there's lots of wide open road with cars wizzing past on the one hand, and varied neighbourhood with not many cars on the other. Walking feels "wrong" in one situation, and perfectly right in the other. I've encountered it in a few other places, the most striking of which was Austin, TX (USA) -- which ironically is apparently the most pedestrian friendly part of Texas (and the only part I've been to

[richdrich]

http://www.metrolyrics.com/come-to-milton-keynes-lyrics-the-style-council.html

I only went there once to visit the offices of the Abbey National for work.

I've only been to Albany to visit the ASB data centre for work.

[tieke]

Then again, I think it is possible to plan a suburb that is also a community. I've never actually been here, but I from what I've seen and heard, these guys seem to have managed it:
http://www.earthsong.org.nz/articles/index.html

[tatjna]

Albany used to be quite different, back in the day.

When I was a kid growing up in Northland, Albany was on the main road, and anyone going north from Auckland passed through it. It was the place people stopped for petrol and coffees on the way into Auckland before hitting city traffic, and the place people stopped on the way out to get last minute stuff on the way to the Hibiscus Coast. Think, Greytown. Lots of cafes, curio shops, one street up the middle.

Then sometime in the 90s they built the motorway from Orewa to Auckland, and it bypassed Albany. It now takes almost 45 minutes less to travel that distance, and there are no long winding hills any more - but the cost of that is that Albany has turned into a dormitory suburb.

It reminds me of Johnsonville. Just.Not.Quite.Anywhere.

Albany

[edm]

Whereas Albany doesn't remind me of Johnsonville in the slightest. Yes, Johnsonville was a stop on the main trunk line until the Tawa diversion, and it was a stop on the main road north until the motorway went past one side. But Johnsonville was an organically grown village with well over 100 years of history, and is still on a human (rather than car) scale -- you can still walk around it, and public transport gets you to basically everything useful.
(If you'd said, eg, Churton Park I'd have more likely agreed with you -- minimal services, on a scale that mostly needs to be driven.)

OTOH, these photos of California suburbia (by Philip Greenspun) highlight one of the issues: the major architectural feature on a bunch of the houses is the garage, with people incidentally living there to tend to the vehicles that live at the house...

Ewen

Re: Albany

[tatjna]

I suspect it's a perspective thing. I don't remember Johnsonville before the Tawa diversion at all, but I do remember Albany before it - and it might surprise people to know that it was organically grown too.

When the motorway was built, it made living that far out of Auckland and commuting possible, and land values increased accordingly, developers went nuts, and you ended up with what you have today - a sterile Churton Park like landscape (good analogy that, I thought of using that one too but Churton Park was never anything before it was developed).

I think the ickiness about Albany, for me, is the way what was a self-sustained, organically grown village was completely wiped out as a sacrifice to the gods of money.

Re: Albany

[richdrich]

Also, give it a chance.

After oil really gets short and the costs of climate change send living costs and taxes through the roof, the outer suburban lifestyle will become unaffordable.

When that happens, people will have to sell or abandon their McMansions.

People without the need to commute to work and shopping will then take them over, grow food on the surrounding spaces and forge a community.

[tieke]

Yeah - I actually spent 9 weeks in Canberra, back in '94/'95. It was, ummm, very clean. I can understand why people live in Canberra, however - heaps of job opportunities that you won't get elsewhere. But why would someone choose to live in Albany (unless the housing was REALLY cheap - which it isn't)?

[richdrich]

Because they're scared, and Albany is as far from South Auckland as you can get and still be in the city.

Because they don't have any wish to interact with people who they haven't specifically arranged to meet.

Because they come from a huge city overseas, and Albany lets them get the green stuff they came to NZ for without any actual nasty smelly animals.

Because it has every major superstore and DIY chain within easy reach.

[tieke]

Hmmm. Which is fair enough really. And so now I'm trying to figure out why I wouldn't want to live in Albany too. Maybe it's the opportunity - the possibility for new interactions and building something bigger, which you lose when you close things off and suppress diversity.