This is the 14th in a series of essays by journalist Bradley Perrett on long-term planning ideas to provide a discussion about creating a better future for the people of Greater Newcastle and the Hunter Region.
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When we talk about heritage buildings, we imagine something in brick or stone with arches and columns - or at least a structure with a whiff of art deco about it.
But how about a weatherboard house? How about streets of weatherboard houses, such as those that a typical Newcastle Herald reader probably grew up in? Would we worry if all that was a goner?
Then there are local shops, which provide so much character to a neighbourhood. Maybe they need to be preserved somehow.
We need to begin thinking about this pretty quickly, because densification is rolling over our suburbs. Here and there, in street after street, we see townhouses or small blocks of flats replacing traditional Australian bungalows.
So those streets of weatherboard houses really are goners. The reason for this is not so much that council policies allow this process, though they do. We should recognise that the real driving force is that this is what people want: they're willing to use less land, doing without big yards, or maybe any yard, so they can live in a convenient location.
Still, we're losing a connection with history as this happens. And it's important history: how Novocastrians lived in the 20th century.
An earlier article in this series argued for lowering the bar in deciding whether to protect buildings in the city centre. As with discussions about preparing for future roads, large buildings and public transport, the idea was that we should think about what later generations would want from us. They'd probably want us to leave more city-centre buildings than we think are worth preserving.
The same consideration applies in our residential areas. But in the suburbs we can't be as generous to the future as we are in a commercial district.
Progress in the city centre isn't much affected when we insist on developers keeping facades as they adapt sites to new purposes (typically, providing apartments). But the only way to preserve a suburban residential street for later generations to admire is to largely ban development on it.
Doing that everywhere across Greater Newcastle would mean preventing densification and, ultimately, denying hundreds of thousands of people a chance to live where they want to. It would also push ever more suburban development up the Hunter Valley.
But what we can do, and should do, is choose a few suburban blocks here and there for preservation as enclaves. Densification can carry on around them, but they would forever remain as samples of an earlier age.
Pro-development readers may be rolling their eyes at the idea of declaring a chunk of Mayfield, for example, as a heritage area. "The whole thing needs bulldozing," the least generous of them may say, probably sitting in a suburb that they regard as more salubrious.
But we should imagine that people in the year 2121 would be fascinated by the sort of Newcastle housing that grew like mushrooms after the steelworks opened in 1915. They'd be grateful to us for thinking of saving some.
Such heritage enclaves should not be frozen in time as museums. Houses need to be lived in. But it should be possible to allow adaptation while keeping the character of what was there.
Notice that we already have something very much like this, but on a much larger scale: the precinct of Californian bungalows that straddles Hamilton and Newcastle West, where modification is controlled and the look of a rich suburb from before World War II is well preserved.
Workers' housing from the 1920s or 1930s is not all we should keep in an enclave or two. How about choosing a representative sample of 1950s suburbia, too, and one from the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s?
In the 22nd century, a preserved chunk of Booragul or Metford would be important heritage.
Indeed, a good idea would be to choose a new enclave for preservation every 10 years, each time looking for a good one from about 40 years before.
Ideally, the heritage enclaves should be close to their original condition and not in the most desirable locations for redevelopment, perhaps because they're far from shops. They may have some inherent disadvantage for redevelopment, such as a high water table or lack of potential for building higher to get views.
Densities elsewhere could be bumped up a bit in compensation, so the average for the suburb isn't changed.
At Mayfield, maybe a good choice would be Pommy Town, the locality around Avon, Bull, Usk and Vine streets where steel-products maker Lysaght built houses in the 1920s for workers it needed to lure out here from Britain.
As for the rest of our residential streets, we really do have to accept that they're changing.
A lot of the new architecture isn't too impressive, however. Many Novocastrians have noticed that that good-looking apartment buildings are going up on main roads and near shops, but a few blocks away the quality is much poorer.
This is a long-term problem, because unsatisfactory buildings that are divided into strata titles are unlikely to be redeveloped; most will last virtually forever.
We should be trying harder to keep little local landmarks, such as old corner shops. Georgetown residents were rightly outraged in 2017 by the unexpected demolition of the facade of a little commercial building from the 1920s and 1930s.
Retention of such facades might also make developers and their architects think about how to create better-looking new buildings in harmony with old structures.
I think just about every pub should be preserved. They're always local landmarks, often among the best-looking buildings in a suburb, and, being fairly big, make good use of their sites.
A particular collection of fairly new structures needs to be kept: many brick facades built around 1991 in somewhat traditional style to replace earthquake damage. They resulted from a commendable council policy aimed at recovering the look of the damaged inner city, especially Beaumont and Hunter streets.
These facades served that purpose well, and still do, even if they were criticised when new as kitsch.
Most importantly, they subtly commemorate the disaster.
Also, demolishing them would be finishing the earthquake's work.
Although this article has mainly called for preservation, let's remember that as our society evolves, our built environment does need to respond.
Newcastle architect David Rose argues that we can't take an absolute attitude toward keeping buildings, especially retaining them in perfectly unchanged condition, which makes them little more than museum pieces.
As new needs for land arise, old buildings simply become unsuitable. They may require heavy adaptation. Sometimes even a facade will be a severe obstruction to functional redevelopment on a specifically important site.
Some people might present that as a justification for the demolition of the Store facade in the West End - though I still wouldn't agree in that case.
Also, Rose argues, we should remember that history doesn't stop. A street of buildings has come down to us as a collection of history from different periods. We might value one of the street's buildings for connecting us to the 1940s, for example, but it might have replaced one from the 1890s.
Looking forward, what we now build in that street will be history for the future.