What is Urban Character?: The case of Camberwell

Abstract

Urban development in Melbourne over recent years has been driven by two primary yet contradictory imperatives. The first is that of urban consolidation—within the Melbourne 2030 planning framework development is to be contained within urban growth boundaries and focused on a number of activity centres including suburban transit nodes. The second is the protection of urban and neighbourhood 'character' which has also become a key plank of the planning code. This paper is part of a larger research project which seeks to explore the phenomenology and discursive construction of urban character and place-identity. It focuses on the middle-ring suburb of Camberwell where one of the city's primary transit nodes and development sites is juxtaposed with fierce resident resistance to change. Interviews with those involved in this resistance reveal a range of dimensions to the experience and meaning of Camberwell's 'character' and the ways it is seen as threatened by development. This character is identified through a series of themes such as 'consistency', 'modesty', 'taste', 'comfort', 'security' and 'custody', themes that apply at once to both spatial and social identity. The identity of Camberwell is constructed in part by struggles for symbolic capital within the socio-spatial urban field, framed by differences of ethnicity and class. The proposed redevelopment of the Camberwell Railway Station has become a trigger that stimulates many of these concerns about the loss of 'character'. The phenomenon of urban character, like its cousins ('place', 'home', 'community', 'neighbourhood') is not easily defined nor contained within the spatial field of urban planning regulation. This case is riddled with paradoxes and foremost among them is that the railway station site comprises a large excavation largely surrounded by commercial and retail functions; the formal and spatial character of residential areas is not under threat from the redevelopment. Indeed one threat in this regard is that the desire to protect an urban character identified with 'modesty' and 'taste' is producing a proliferation of mock-historic styles. The claims for Camberwell's 'character' are often immodest and the vigilant policing of anything that ruptures the 'comfort zone' (from crass tastes to ethnic differences) can reveal a certain anxiety. A further paradox is that resistance to new development prevents the ideal of 'aging in place'; the attempt to preserve Camberwell's 'character' may lead to a loss of its characters. The paper is more broadly aimed at a critical re-thinking of theories of place identity and the politics of the character/consolidation debate.