Despite what Flight of the Conchords have to say about it, inner city life isn’t hard at all. In fact, speaking to the city slickers in this story, living in town does more to relieve the pressure and stress from their lives than anything.  Josh Daris is a 23-year-old tattoo artist who moved into a room above a Grenfell Street pub in June this year and he’s not too sure whether he’s left the city’s borders since. How does one score such a golden spot as a room above a pub? Apparently you need a guardian angel. “Sophie is my saint” Josh explains, “She was in the process of moving in here and she hooked me up after I got back from Melbourne when I was stranded without a place to live.” Sounds opportune but then he showed me the toilets and bathroom that he shares with the other people living there… not so pretty.

 

"The state of the bathroom made me fear for what the kitchen would look like. I wonder whether he has a fridge. “I do have a fridge,” he answers me, “but it’s not plugged in”. “But where do you keep your beer then?!?” I protest. “Dude I have a whole fridge full of beer downstairs. It’s called a bar.” Oh right. A new equation was starting to develop in my mind; living in town = convenient.

 

 

But it’s much more than convenient, it’s sustainable. And that’s one of the key ideas Adelaide’s Lord Mayor, Michael Harbison is trying to push. Sitting down with the Mayor in his gold carpeted room burrowing my cheap $20 op-shop suit pants into the plush leather upholstery I was surprised to meet and chat with a man who is frank about what it takes to build a city’s population.

 

“Cities kind of busted apart into the zoning movement and suburbanisation at a time when manufacturing was noisy and noxious” the Mayor explained and going on he illustrated how there were several factors in our living requirements when the zoning movement occurred in the 50s and 70s that suggested a quarter acre block was necessary. People once needed a sceptic tank, a veggie patch and somewhere to dry their clothes, however, in the post industrial world we have a centralised sewer system, we dry clothes in the clothes dryer and buy veggies from the supermarket. On top of this, industry shifts from metal bashing to a knowledge base. “With the changes in what’s happening in those land use activities and changes in technology you’ve got the opportunity to put back the components that cities had when they were last really successful” he said. Was this the ultimate plan, a bustling, cosmopolitan metropolis? The Mayor isn’t as ambitious as that but he does believe we’ll soon have a city that works on many levels: culturally, economically and environmentally.

 

Sammi Bhartia, Johnny Huang, Annie Hoffman and George Randle all extol the same virtues of city living as Josh and will attest to the fact that this city works. Really these five testimonies will make you utterly envious and question why the hell you’re spending hours every week stressing out in traffic, wasting money on petrol and missing out on being a part of this growing city.

 

 

 

The Couple: George Randle 23 Annie Hoffman 24   George and Annie both work full time in the city, George as a graphic designer and Annie as a Lawyer. As we sit down to have a chat George takes over in the kitchen preparing a vegetarian pasta bake for the evening meal while Annie sits down for a chat and a beer. Why did you guys choose to live in the city? Annie – “I never wanted to live anywhere else. I used to live in Athelstone in the foot hills and I convinced my dad that it was a really good idea to sell our house and buy an apartment in the city.” George – “It was great when I was studying because it only took 15 minutes to get to TAFE. When I was living up in Crafers it took 45 minutes to an hour.” What’s in your fridge? “Olives, olive tapenade, coronas, a rotting egg plant, cheese. There’s always juice. We tend to go to the store every night after work to get what we need to make dinner because we don’t have to decide what we want to eat at the start of the week. We shop every day, all of our meat is fresh every day. The Gilbert Street IGA – the butcher there is awesome. Go out or stay in? “Living on Hutt Street we eat at Good Life a lot and our new favourite place is Woks Happening. It sounds really corny but it’s actually really, really good Asian food. Often we have people over here for dinner before we go out because we’re already in the city.” Do you use the free trams? No, we walk everywhere. For or against street art? George - “Oh totally for it. I think there’s a big difference where street art can be really tasteful and clever and brighten up parts of the city whereas vandalism is just vandalism.”

 

 

One of the hardest jobs for the Mayor right now is communicating what it means to live in a city, in a modern and creative city. I had questioned him why there was an advertising campaign that promoted Rundle Mall as a nice place to visit for shopping etcetera but that there was no campaign which made you feel like Rundle Mall could be your local shops, within walking distance. “The advertising industry is very conventional and traditional” said Michael. “Do you think I can explain to the advertising industry the notions that we’re talking about? The whole ‘You Are Here’ campaign of some 18 months ago, the whole shit fight about that was that the advertising agency would not listen to what we were trying to say. Every time you talk about city living they go into some sort of boring thing, like working or something. I said, ‘no, no. Living in that city is like living in that nightclub.’ You’ve got to show that ragged edge of living in the city. You know you walk out of a nightclub and you throw a rock on the window of your mate who lives ‘round the corner to get his attention and it’s that really close stuff but they just didn’t get it.” But does the Mayor of Adelaide want more young people living in town? “Oh hell yeah.” It turns out that the City’s got targets of attracting another 15,000 people to the city. ‘The way I sort of put it,” Michael said, as he leant forward in his seat, “imagine we had a youth festival where 15,000 people came to stay in the square mile of the city, imagine the change in the feel of the city. Wouldn’t that be great? What if they didn’t go home? They just stayed.”

 

The five people featured in this story are all from diverse backgrounds and different incomes yet they all speak of the ease and love they have for the city lifestyle. Josh walks everywhere and brags about living two and a half minutes from the tattoo gallery on Rundle Street where he works. “I just love the fact that I’ve got places like the Exeter in my backyard. It just makes being sociable so much easier” he said. It seems like the festival has already started.