Mall's problems will not be answered by a 'silver bullet' solution

Shepparton's Maude St Mall.

Answers to what ails Shepparton’s Maude St Mall are not to be found in a silver bullet solution.

No one thing will unravel the mosaic of matters that demand a whole of community response; a cocktail of measures must be implemented to confront the evolving dilemmas of the 21^st Century and so see the mall become a sustainable and bustling social space.

Answers proffered by many consider the mall in isolation and so looked at and applied through that prism they might have some immediate positive impact, but no long-term value.

To take the mall so out of context is unfair both to it and the greater Shepparton community.

An architect friend, who was not talking about the mall, said his contemporaries failed when they simply drew lines around projects and created something that misunderstood its social context, had no sympathy its environment and so did not “talk” with its surrounds.

The mall should not be considered in isolation, rather as is an integral part of Greater Shepparton and by implication the wider world.

Everything and every idea around which the 20^th Century was built is changing, those ideas are slipping away, and fast.

Now it gets tough. Energy scarcity; changes to our weather systems and different social and commercial wants and needs will force a fresh way of living upon us; the city needs densification for as oil become prohibitively expensive, to find, extract and buy, transport will become human powered (cycling, walking) and public rather than private; an increasingly hot city is going to need green oases, such as the beginnings of what have now in our mall; business is morphing from market driven capitalism to a peer-to-peer collaborative process that will need near zero-cost social spaces such the mall where people can gather, share and participate in their community.

A recent discussion in Brisbane about the proliferation of enclosed shopping centres throughout Australia, and around the world, brought praise for what they are, but it was pointed out that although entry was free, they effectively barred low-income people for they had little value beyond shopping, that is spending money.

Deepening the confusion, the much lauded private shopping centres are just that; they are private and so are generally out of bounds to public gatherings that are not about adding to the centre’s growth and profit-based agenda.

Malls, such as that in Shepparton, have a different dynamic in that they are public, they are not enclosed and are wonderful places for the social milieu that is the springboard for the richness that is community.

Shepparton needs to preserve and protect its pedestrian mall; expand and build on what exists; create active pedestrian links to the city’s railway station in preparation for a dearth of energy; look “up-river”, consider how the world is changing and where Shepparton needs to be in 2050.

The council of the City of Greater Shepparton, to its credit has looked “up-river” through its Commercial Activity Centres Strategy, but has failed to understand that the Shepparton of the 21^st Century cannot be built from the ideas of last century.