GRIMY CITY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21922, 17 January 1946, Page 2

GRIMY CITY

"CLEAN-UP” IN SYDNEY

LORD MAYOR’S CAMPAIGN

RESTORING BEAUTY SYDNEY, Jan. 12. Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Alderman Reginald James Bartley, begins a third term of office with the determination to restore some of the city’s pre-war beauty. To-day Sydney is a dirty, grimy city saved by its natural beauty spots. Through shortage of labour its parks and gardens are bare and neglected and dotted with wartime makeshift buildings. The city buildings are dirt-coated or weather-beaten and badly need painting. The city reflects the loss of civic pri.de—never a strong trait with Sydney citizens —and papers and rubbish are thrown carelessly in streets and gutters. Lord Mayor Bartley Attends to cleanup the streets first. If he fails to get results by persuasion he will launch a campaign of “savage” coercion by prosecution. He has appealed to city property owners to paint, renovate and reconstruct buildings.

The council has granted him £91,000 for expenditure on the city’s 403 acres of parklands —almost double the prewar vote. Much of this money will be required for replacement of trees and shrubs, 300,000 of which are destroyed or stolen by vandals each year. “Vandalism," said Alderman Bartley, “is worse in Sydney than anywhere else in the world.”

Alderman Bartley hopes, too, that before he puts aside the ermine robe and gold chains of office he will have seen the start of several large undertakings which will make Sydney more attractive. The programme includes an Olympic pool, street extensions costing £3,000,000, a traffic tunnel under King's Cross, and a workers’ housing scheme that will replace slums with modern flats built in planned parklands.