Sprawl #2

mark_melb

As educated people, I would like to know how many of the workplaces within which we dwell have a high proportion of employees who live in the distant suburbs.

Coming originally from a very small design community, I am constantly amazed at the number of people who work in the design industry, here in Melbourne, that choose to live in places so remote from where 'it' is all happening, drive to and park their cars at work every day and drive home at night and think it is okay, never visit gallery, read and watch only trash, have a 'that's someone elses problem' attitude to the damaging of the environment (including physical/urban).......... and is never available to work weekends let alone a minute after 5.30.

A couple of us recently mentioned to one of our guys who lives in the exurbs but is always in either St Kilda, Prahran, S. Yarra on the weekends, owns his own coffee machine etc etc that he should move to where he spends most of his waking hours, downsizes, sells one of the cars and maybe use public transport. The answer? "Er, yuck, public transport?".

Well we replied with "Er, commuter". And suggested if we were employers we would treat suburban dwellers worse than we do smokers.

Are we being fair?

Please discuss..

[ed: post renamed to avoid duplication with another]

mark_melb

I think the deathly silence says it all.

midcareer

Deathly silence might say it all.Horror at overt snobbery might be an equally valid reaction."Educated" people may possibly even exist outside the inner city.Income level, household makeup and all sorts of other factors may determine where people choose to live.People are born, live and die in "distant" suburbs - "it" does not all happen in the inner city-can I suggest that you have read too many Age coloured supplements?And for the record I live in the centre of Melbourne.The sort of narrow-mindedness displayed here contributes to marginalising design professions to being "very small".

mark_melb

Ah yes. I’m sure others have also mixed up 'educated' and 'intelligent'. I learnt many years ago not to be fooled by people with those letters after their names.
I agree with your comment that “’it’ does not all happen in the inner city”, but you would have to admit that most things do happen there and I do understand that they are also listed in ‘The Herald’. Believe me, the ‘The Age’ colour supplements are certainly for the likes of me. Why do you think the major political parties, just like the papers, direct their policy towards the ‘aspirationals’? There appears to them to be too few like yoursef and myself to bother about. I think the deathly silence is more about apathy, otherwise you would have expected more than one reply in a momth.
May I suggest that if you knew my background you would be less likely to regard that attitude as snobbery and please don’t assume that I am a ‘design professional’. Remember only about 5% of those who work in the design community are ‘design professionals’, the remainder are interior designers, Architects that are happy to carry out less intense drafting roles, graphic artists etc etc. and also support roles.
I’m sorry but when you have an office that has some of the ‘design professionals’ driving very large engined cars to and from their newly built Pt. Cook project home or Jennings ‘number’ in the outer East daily and whining about the cost of fuel, even you might begin to think there is something sick.
Call me narrow minded, if you wish, but how do you think this looks to the clients?

simone

@ mark_mel:

I think the deathly silence says it all.

Firstly, even if I am not contributing directly to your initial topic: what wonders me here in Australia in generall, is that not a lot of people use the internet to communicate at all. Coming from Germany I struggle to find informations here in the net - even just to find a good site about events in Adelaide is a big task.

I was reading through this forum all day and don't understand why there are not more people taking part - unless it is coming to 'interesting' topics like wages! Well, then everybody is on!

And propably this is exactely the thing, why there are not many responses to your topic - a lot of people are not taking part actively but just want to get something out of it. Maybe, this is why people life in suburbs - to have excess to all facilities, without having the dense living conditions but with the smell of an peaceful surburbian neighborhood. I guess, this is happening around the world. It is a social thing, that we can't change. The only good thing is, you will always find people who are focusing on living by participating, so why bother!?!

2 months now, we have migrated to Adelaide, propably the only city in the world with more than 1 mio inhabitants but without any metropolitan characteristiques. So far we like it - but we are stil looking where 'it is all happening'!l

peter_j

I was reading through this forum all day and don't understand why there are not more people taking part - unless it is coming to 'interesting' topics like wages! Well, then everybody is on!

:? Yes indeed. Welcome to the forum.

mark_melb

Welcome Simone

simone

Thank you, Peter & mark_melb, for the welcome!
Hope I find some interesting discussions here - as a foreigner, I want to learn about "local" issues...