Matthew Levinson

A city's liquid life

Published on 05/10/07
by matt

Sydney’s liquor licensing paradigm might be alright on the macro-scale: it caters for many thousands migrating from the suburbs every weekend, but does it attract/satisfy the kinds of creative people needed for the city’s further growth?

It seems pitted against the small social spaces that really set the mood of a city. The cost of licenses and starting up spaces like this feeds into the type of places that start up, and ultimately the kind of people attracted to those places.

Last night’s Liquid Cities, the latest in a line of City Talks at the Angel Place Recital Hall, presented a different take on this. Adrienne Goehler, Berlin’s former senator for arts and science, presented photos of artists reclaiming aspects of the city over time, and talked about artists and scientists as creative people vital to the growth of the city.

Goehler argued the city plays a deeper role in attracting creative people to the city. Berlin, of course, is now one of Europe’s key creative hubs. And she said that a relatively small investment in local music scenes (indirectly, local bars that aren’t priced out of the market) is more effective in attracting young, creative scientists, technologists and artists than huge investments in supermarkets, research facilities and so on. It does this because it makes the city a place these people want to be.

Still, as Goehler made abundantly clear, and as this Berliner jabs, there are a lot of people in Berlin without jobs.

Here is an excerpt that appeared in the SMH yesterday. A podcast should be up here soon.

Momentum’s building for liquor licensing in NSW – for more information check Raise the Bar.

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