The Turner Residents Association were hoping to get a selection of housing blocks in Turner to be added to the ACT Heritage Register, but were shot down by ACT Heritage Council and its chairman Duncan Marshall reports ABC News.
“There’s been a lot of change,” he said.
“Particularly in one of the sections where a lot of the houses have been redeveloped so it’s lost that integrity.
“The council decided that were many better and earlier examples of garden city planning in Canberra.”
The motivation behind getting Turner on the Heritage Register may be less about preserving history and more about some Turner residents not wanting apartments built in their area.
A spokeswoman for the Turner Residents Association, Nicola Watson says that they’ll be launching an appeal.
“We feel that the streets and the surrounding area are now being completely overdeveloped, there’s just endless apartments,” she said.
“We felt that this was a particularly beautiful area and that needed to be preserved for families and future generations.
“I get the feeling that in some ways this is a political decision.
“There’s a lot of pressure at the moment from developers to go ahead with developments, pressure on the Government, pressure on the Heritage Council perhaps.”
Marshall denies that this was a political decision, and claims that even if the suburb were heritage listed that would not mean a blanket ban on development.
Any Rioters live in Turner? Do you think any of the blocks there need to be heritage listed, or is this just another case of Nimby-ism?