In my research following on from my previous posts I happened upon a discussion forum. The two relevant posts were discussions for and against development in the Daintree rainforest. The conversation was as follows:
For Development
The people living in the Daintree today are privileged to be living in this place at this time. Why? Because we can build an economy based on conservation and management of this global treasure.
The community has the potential to be the solution to loss of rainforests around the world.
If we are permitted to be the custodians, we can demonstrate cost-effective land managment and protection paid for by tourism.
The Wet Tropics Management Authority claim that it costs $13m per year to manage the World heritage Area and that the user fees amount to $375.
Our community does it without any payment by the taxpayer. Hopefully, the community will be recognised as an asset rather than a liability.
Against Development
Some landholders look after the forest..but all have made it less natural than when they arrived and this continues a trend that no one so far knows how to stop. So in light of this fact people that live there and want to live there and exploit it for what ever commercial or residential look for justifications of their position.
The government compensation package is nothing more than theft and at best it is forced environmental donation which forced people in some cases to lose more than $100,000 overnite in lost property values..at a time when prices everywhere else are rising. The government purchase option is for unimproved valuers valuation plus 10%. These values were way below raw market value and even if the property was developed it is counted as "undeveloped". This means if you borrowed money to buy the land and build any infrastructure the overcaptitalisation rate suddenly becomes anything up to twice the value of what you can get for the property. This means that some individual land owners are not only placed in a situation of forced bankruptcy..even having purchased property with development rights..but they are asked to "donate" individually a massive sum..whilst the general public, whom the forest is being preserved for..are asked to individually contribute virtually nothing.
The local council argues that "if you wanted to build a house on your land you had to put an application in" but since these last only 12 months unless you had the cash (eg $100,000) ready to roll, in an area where the banks have extremely high equity ratio's, there was no chance whatever to save the money.
This is how the government operates. They dont want to spend the $50 million to buy the land so they introduce a law that drops the value to a more affordable level. In any case they know that unless the Cassowary (now reduced to around 25 breeding pairs and still falling) is absolutely preserved in the forest, the forest itself will collapse by virtue of the fact that this one species is positioned as a singular critical life cycle link for most of large and/or toxic seeding trees. These incidentally make up a large percentage of the more primitive species.
There is no strategy to preserve the Cassowary, there is no strategy to buy the 1127 properties back, the last $23 million purchsed only 70 properties (6% preservation outcome) and there is no strategy to stop the development trend. This trend over the last 25 years has seen new roads constructed, much of the forest sub divided, many of the properties built on and this continues to this day despite Premier Beatties promise in Feb 2004 to "keep the bobcats and backhoes out of the daintree". In the 3rd week of Nov 2004 the backhoes are still clearing new house pads, the new building at the airport is being completed and the trend continues as it will until somebody says "Heres the ideal plan to stop it now " That of course will never happen..and ultimately the Daintree..and the Cassowary will become no more than a memory to a generation that wished it could have kept it...but thats progress.
Theres not one single person putting up an argument in favour of developing the Daintree..but still its happening..thats progress..and its now beyond our control..even when it comes to developing a new town in the middle of a world heritage rainforest..we cant stop ourselves.
[http://forum.daintreerainforest.com/viewtopic.php?p=13747]
This problem presents a current real issue in which the ideas I am interested in may be able to propose potential solutions. After further investigation I found that in 2004 the Douglas Shire Council put in place moratorium preventing houses being built on 450 properties.
My initial ideas for the interpretation of this as a studio project is to take the orientation & size of the F.A.M.E. site in Sydney and overlay this on the landscape of the Daintree rainforest and investigate the potential for coexistance of rainforest and development. With this proposed subject site I can investigate a series of development potentials ranging from regional domestic community to the program of the F.A.M.E. site as well as any number of potentials in between these two extremes.
Another aspect I would like to overlay is the restoration of the rainforest. There is a poperty of family friends outside Byron Bay that over the last 30 years has been reinstated from a banana plantation to a dense, restored rainforest that harbours immense wildlife. This property can be set as a precedent to show that if the future direction of the Daintree communities were to shift now, there is no reason that the current insensitive development could not be restored to its original condition.
As exemplified by the comments of Sean Godsell, the current approach of sensitivity to landscape requires one to go bush discarding technology in favour for a fireplace and a hut. I set out to dispell of this paradigm and embrace technology using it to its full potential in acheving this goal. (people retiring a life in the city to spend their days out in the rainforest are presumably in a stable economic position)
I intend on spending the next 8 weeks;-
- researching the current situation in the daintree,
- establishing potential programs for the site and investigating their relevance,
- contact the architects / developers of my numerous precedents and seek advice / guidance / support,
- investigate the potential directions an architecture in this landscape could take,
- prepare a detailed brief for the project.
During the mid year break I intend to
- spend a week on the property outside Byron Bay learning as much as posible about rainforest restoration, conservation and native wildlife as possible (the residents are close friends & directors of the wildlife organisation W.I.R.E.S),
- spend a week in the Daintree Rainforest staying in a variety of locations,
- meet with the local Daintree Rainforest council,
- meet with conservation groups,
- visit some of the current examples of architecture within the rainforest.
