Does spending $40 million to build a branch library make sense?
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Sydney City Council has announced the winner of the architectural competition for Sydney’s new Green Square library and plaza. But does it make sense to spend big money on a branch library?
Proposed Green Square library and plaza by Stewart Hollenstein
Last week the City of Sydney announced the winner of its international architectural competition for the new $40 million Green Square Library and Plaza to the south of the city centre.
The winner is small Sydney practice, Stewart Hollenstein. The firm came second in my Archibabble competition last year (although I very much doubt they won the commission either because of, or in spite of, that accolade).
What distinguishes their entry is they’ve put most of the library underground, maximising the area of the plaza at or close to ground level. One of the judges, Glenn Murcutt, says:
The brilliant thing about this design is it is in fact a landscape. And being a landscape, the whole of it becomes the library.
I’ve leafed through all 173 entries. There are a few that propose using the exterior, especially the roof, as open space, but Stewart Hollenstein’s entry is the only one I’d describe as mostly subterranean.
There’s a report on the winning design and a video of the judges extolling its virtues. If you want to marvel at ‘black box’ decision-making in action, you can also read the jury’s report (nominally) explaining the basis for its selection.
What struck me most about this project though isn’t the architecture but the idea of dropping a cool $40 million on a library in a park.
We’re at the start of an era of electronic communication that’s already wreaking havoc on the newspaper and publishing industries.
Does it make sense to invest so much on what, when all the hype about “community hub” is stripped away, is a suburban branch library?
I wondered the same thing when the Victorian government and Melbourne city council announced last year that Dockland’s lack of community focus would be addressed in part by providing a library.
Docklands is a place where modest two bed units sell for circa $1 million. The residents are well-heeled and many are working visitors on short-term projects.
These aren’t, it seems to me, the sort of people whose lives are seriously lacking for the want of somewhere to borrow books. If they want one they’ll buy it and probably get it well before the library does.
If they want to meet people they’ve got a CBD’s worth of opportunities on their doorstep. They’re more likely to run across their neighbours in a local restaurant, a bar, or even Costco, than in a neighbourhood library.
The internet has already had a major impact on the role of lending libraries.
It’s made importing books from the likes of Book Depository a lot cheaper. Buying has gotten much more competitive with borrowing, especially for relatively well-heeled residents who’re time-poor.
The internet also provides the option of ebooks. They can be downloaded instantly at even lower prices, making buying a vastly more convenient option than borrowing.
And some libraries are making it easier still. My local library – the Yarra Plenty network – already provides the option of borrowing in ebook format via an arrangement with the wonderful Brisbane City Council Library.
I accept there’s very likely an important and ongoing role for something like libraries to curate the increasing volume and complexity of information. But that seems like it’s a highly centralised function.
Local libraries will nevertheless have a role in the short to medium term. They support activities like book clubs and preschooler sessions and there’ll be readers who insist on paper for some time yet.
It’s a declining function though, or at best one that isn’t likely to grow significantly. It seems doubtful that branch libraries are the sorts of facilities that justify tens of millions of new expenditure.
Council is also pitching the Green Square library and plaza as a “community hub”. It’s hoped it will bring residents of the area together.
That’s an important objective, however I can’t see the young, professional demographic of Green Square making a library the focal point of local life anymore than I can see it happening in Docklands.
If a library doesn’t attract users in large numbers then the project is essentially an extraordinarily expensive park.
No doubt this issue can be argued both ways. I’d really like to see the business plan for the library and, although I’m not confident one has been done, the benefit-cost analysis.
I see the value in creating a park in a central location like this, but I’d expect there are plenty of other competing projects that could lay claim to the rest of the money.
Whatever the value of the function might be, it’s an impressive-looking solution in my opinion. Congratulations to twenty something architects Felicity Stewart and Matthias Hollenstein.
Proposed Green Square library and plaza by Stewart Hollenstein
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Alan,
Why ‘strip away’ the hype about Community Hub? My local libray is far more than a place to borrow books. It has become a real community space. The programs it delivers include computer training, Children’s storytimes, Free WIFI connection, Holiday programs, conversation circles – the list goes on… in addition, our local University students find it a great place to meet and converse. I agree it is a huge budget but hopefully it will reap rich rewards!
Colinbong #1:
That’s true of my local library too (part of the excellent Yarra Plenty network) and it’s a valuable function. But it’s essentially a service for a small segment of the population, not something that has a significant role in creating community across the whole neighbourhood like the SCC says Green Square library will create. I’d like my Council to continue it (although not all of the activities need to be delivered via a library) but I’d be wanting to see the justification, including the long-run outlook for suburban libraries, if it proposed to spend $40 million.
I agree with Colinbong. You seem to have unnecessarily narrowed your perception of the function of modern libraries. They are quiet places to study, venues to take kids for book readings, venues where seniors can learn new IT skills, they have meeting rooms, cafes and wi-fi and they’re great spaces in which you can decompress from the pressures of the outside world (hence the attractiveness of a subterranean space, I suppose).
You may also be overstating the impact of e-books on the paper-book industry. Large scale events like book fairs and book talks remain as popular as ever as far as I know so if a world-class library like this one can tap into that, they’ll be doing fine imho.
Thanks for another great piece though. Everytime I happen across your posts, I find them really interesting!
Have you been to the City Council’s Crown Street branch library in Surry Hills? A high-end building in a socially fairly similar area and very heavily used.
After reading, and commenting on, your promotion of higher public transport fares I’m starting to see a pattern of support for the downgrading of the provision, or attractiveness, of public services.
David Sanderson #4:
As it happens, I was once a member of the Surry Hills library. It was at a time though when the internet was in its infancy and there was still a fair proportion of lower income residents in the area.
I stated clearly in the article above that there is still a warrant for branch libraries IMHO, but there are questions about their scale and how their role might be affected by change. And I also acknowledged in it the wider role of libraries.
And re your comment on my public transport fares article: yes, you probably will notice a pattern of questioning the desirability of middle class welfare.
Your characterisation of public transport as middle class welfare is absurd. If you get on a bus in my area (Marrickville) you will see mostly pensioners, working poor, students etc. During the peaks trains and buses are also heavily used by workers (middle and working class) doing the convenient and socially responsible thing of avoiding putting more cars on the road. Why do they need to discouraged and penalised?
If the City Council was to be restricted to opening branch libraries only in disadvantaged areas then few if any libraries would be built. I agree that middle class welfare in the form of payments and rebates are undesirable but stretching that to include the provision of public services would only lead to the impoverishment of the entire public sphere of our lives.
David/Alan, if there a case to be made that public transport funding is middle class welfare it’s because the only parts of the system that work well enough to be viable alternatives to households owning multiple cars are those that service the inner suburbs, where working classes can seldom afford to live these days. But that’s a problem that should be tackled regardless – a) ensuring that PT services for more reasonably-priced suburbs are improved and b) tackling obstacles that exist to providing more affordable housing in denser areas that can be better served by PT.
At any rate, if you pulled the rug from current public transport funding, working classes would almost certainly feel it more than middle classes (who’d just jump in their cars instead).
Dylan Nicholson #7:
This is getting off-topic of course, but…the issue is the level of cost-recovery which in turn bears on level of service. Most users of PT in Australian cities are middle class but they pay only circa a third of the operating costs and none of the capital costs. The students, pensioners and working poor in Marrickville that David Sanderson refers to would be eligible for concessional fares, which is at it should be i.e. subsidise on the basis of need.
Middle class is left undefined but in Australia it is typically defined in a way that includes the majority of the population. To say then that most users of public transport are middle class just says that public transport use reflects the overall population. As Dylan points out increasing fares will encourage middle class users to abandon public transport in favour of their cars. The resulting increased congestion will cause its own significant economic and health costs.
Because public transport use is so cross-class (and many low income users do not get concessional fares) and has important benefits for all city-dwellers regardless of whether they use it or not, it makes much more sense to attack middle class welfare by cutting out the government payments and rebates they receive.
Alan has not responded to the points about City Council libraries. Does he believe that no branch libraries should be built by the City Council because the middle class will use them (or will not use them – Alan’s argument goes both ways)?
Should existing libraries be closed or downgraded because they are now servicing a more middle class demographic?
David Sanderson #9:
While we’re talking about PT:
PT users who’re disadvantaged should be subsidised;
The profile of PT users is biased toward those on higher incomes. Most of those on modest incomes drive;
Those who can afford to pay their way – the majority of PT users – should pay more;
That would provide more revenue to improve PT services and attract more patrons, benefitting all users;
The biggest group of full-fare users – CBD workers – don’t have the option of driving because it’s too expensive (parking, congestion). Note that the mode share of car commuters to Sydney CBD car is just 17%.
My point about questioning middle class welfare at #5 was explicitly in relation to PT fares, not libraries.
“Does spending $40 million to build a branch library make sense?” is sub-editing worthy of the Hun. “Does investing $25 million in a modern library to serve the southern Sydney region make sense; is a fairer question and is less emotive and more accurate.
A few us would argue that the $25 million investment of local rate payers money in a library delivering modern community and EDI services would be totally warranted as a step in raising the social and intellectual capital of Southern Sydney.
hk #11:
If it were indeed the southern region of the Sydney metro area you might have a point, but it’s the southern part of the City of Sydney, one of 38 municipalities in the metropolitan area. And according to the SMH it’s $40 million for the whole library/plaza project.
While I find it slightly utopian there is an interesting take on the role of modern libraries by Cory Doctorow here.
The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, has sent this letter to Crikey:
When next in Sydney, perhaps Alan Davies could visit the City of Sydney’s Surry Hills library to understand why the City has decided to build a new library for the future at Green Square.
Criticising the City’s decision to spend $25 million on the Green Square library and another $15 million on an adjoining plaza (Crikey, March 5), Davies dismisses libraries as little more than “somewhere to borrow books” and predicts the digital revolution that has wrought havoc on newspapers will do the same to libraries.
The facts suggest otherwise.
Since it opened in 2009 at a cost of $24 million, Surry Hills library has been hugely busy with a wide range of activities and events far removed from their traditional roles many of which are regularly booked out.
Surry Hills offers babies aged from zero to two “rhyme time” classes to introduce them to reading, children a few years older attend bilingual story reading sessions , there are regular film nights and writing workshops for adults, horror book readings, free classes in internet basics, lessons in Microsoft programs like Word and Excel and classes on building websites.
Librarians organise talks from well-known architects or others prominent community members, arrange film discussions with the ABC’s Margaret Pomeranz and music nights where local youths perform and can record songs.
These are the sort of activities that have seen library use increase across the country, not just in Surry Hills, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics finding 34 per cent of the population go to libraries each year – nearly two thirds go more than five times a year and a quarter visit more than twenty times a year. It’s a worldwide trend that has even seen a library installed in Amsterdam’s airport.
And while many people still use libraries as a place to read quietly, more and more people use them as a place to connect with others and meet people with similar interests.
It is to foster this sort of interaction that led to the City of Sydney’s decision to build the Green Square library and run an open international design competition to ensure residents get the best facility possible.
In the next two decades, Green Square will become home to 40,000 more people, many of them families living in large, high density apartment blocks who will need public places for recreation and to connect with neighbours.
Green Square library will offer them a place for people to meet, to work together on projects and to share experiences and even practice musical instruments. We are planning facilities for making films, we’ll hire computer tablets, install tables where the surface is a smart screen so groups can work together on digital projects.
The library even has an amphitheatre so that it can host concerts or talks with the plaza designed to integrate with the library and allow those using it to watch performances below, it will have Wi-Fi, mobile furniture to make it easy to host impromptu performances or to watch concerts and films.
Our libraries still have books, but more and more they have evolved into popular community centres that are a focal point for residents throughout their lives.
Comment #14 (Clover Moore):
Although a number of commenters have either missed it or chosen to ignore it, I did explicitly recognise in the article the wider community role of branch libraries:
I didn’t criticise Council’s decision to build the plaza component either:
I note you offer the 34% figure, but my article is specifically about branch libraries. It’s also 34% of 15 years and over, not total population (and for NSW specifically the relevant number is 31.9%). Does it include high school, university, business, government, State and national libraries, as well as branch libraries?
More importantly, the data is from 2005-06, which is relatively ancient in terms of the changes made by the internet.
What would be really useful is some contemporary trend data on the per capita use of branch libraries within the City of Sydney, showing (a) book-related usage and (b) specified community-related usage.
I appreciate branch libraries are actively seeking to re-invent themselves as community hubs, but it doesn’t automatically follow that they are the best-placed institutions, or that librarians have the right skills, to deliver community services or indeed foster a sense of community.
I recognise in the article that branch libraries have a role in the medium term, but the questions I’m asking relate to whether it’s a sustainable role and how much, given competing priorities, they should get.
I think portraying my article as “criticising” Council’s decision is overly defensive. It doesn’t condemn but rather raises legitimate and important public policy questions.
And what is it with politicians having to write directly to “the publisher” – why can’t you just comment directly on the article like others?
P.S. Love your work on cycle paths and light rail.
$40 million could go a long way to providing a decent online ebook lending system. I have to go to my local Holroyd library in Western Sydney if I want to check out an ebook. Kinda defeats the purpose really.
If there is a need for community centers to support all of the other activities that happen in libraries then by all means allocate funds and have purpose built centers.
Look on the train – how many people are reading a book and how many are looking at some other device – be it phone, tablet or ebook reader.
If reading is to be encouraged, especially to younger people, it should be delivered in a format that is convenient and accessible.
Clover Moore is right and you, Alan, are wrong. You trivialised branch libraries: “They support activities like book clubs and preschooler sessions and there’ll be readers who insist on paper for some time yet.”
They help people find the relevant legal info to help them with family law, immigration and other such problems. They help them, with their resources, to write better CVs, and business plans; they help kids who attend schools with poor resources to be able to access the same quality materials as kids who attend well-resourced schools – I could go on with a million more serious examples that you are apparently unaware of.
“I can’t see the young, professional demographic of Green Square making a library the focal point of local life” – so what? You won’t find too many of them at your symphony orchestra concerts, or lectures at the museum either – but they may become users later in life.
“I’d really like to see the business plan for the library and, although I’m not confident one has been done, the benefit-cost analysis.” Yes, I wonder how the cost-benefit plan will acount for the benefit of the help given to the sort of clients I mentioned earlier? Those symphony orchestras better come up with some good ones too.
“Buying has gotten much more competitive with borrowing, especially for relatively well-heeled residents who’re time-poor.” because who matters but the ‘well-heeled’? Are you really unaware, or so dismissive of why public libraries are free?
“I appreciate branch libraries are actively seeking to re-invent themselves as community hubs, but it doesn’t automatically follow that they are the best-placed institutions, or that librarians have the right skills, to deliver community services or indeed foster a sense of community.”
Well, libraries don’t have to be the only community hubs, but they certainly already are such places. They’re there, and very popular. They were already there and since equipped with computers and other facilities they’ve just responded to community demand to become what they are. Do you think it would be best to ignore their success and call in consultants to try to devise some new form of community hub?
My local library does allow me to download ebooks from home and it gives me access, at home to many commercial databases, such as ones for learning languages – and I’m sure this new new library will do the same. But my library is also conveniently just down the road and I can order stuff in, by sending them an email saying what sheet music, or whatever, I want, and they get it in from the State Library and I can pick it up and return it there. I won’t go on, but there are so many useful, unique services that local libraries provide (local history collections being an obvious one) that I can’t really understand how an educated person would quibble over $25 million for a major new branch library.
boscombe #17:
There are always some who think I’m wrong. There’s a guy today who reckons I shouldn’t question the proposed freeway into Sydney’s CBD.
But at least in that case I concluded the road was wrong. In the case of the library, the tone was much more one of asking questions than opposing.
I don’t agree $25 million is a mere “quibble”. Public expenditures, whether on roads or libraries, shoudn’t be exempt from scrutiny and questioning.
There are no sacred cows when it comes to public services and infrastructure, whether they be roads or libraries. The tone of my piece wasn’t dismissive of libraries and raised perfectly reasonable questions.
And I’m non-plussed as to how you interpreted what I wrote as “trivialising” libraries and advancing the cause of the “well-heeled”. Maybe you should go back and read the article again with an open mind.
I’ll agree with you Alan. A library doesn’t seem to meet the demographic of the location and that is probably one of the core problems. What’s wrong with asking if a library is the best usage for the space and the money?
And in reply to boscombe #17
“Do you think it would be best to ignore their success and call in consultants to try to devise some new form of community hub?”
That sounds like a brilliant idea actually. If you’re going to put it out to an international contest I think you’d get some really interesting answers.
Alan, I quoted your attempt at trivialising libraries – you described their clients as book clubbers, preschoolers and people “who insist on paper for some time yet”. You suggest that they are not needed because the residents are ‘well-heeled’, books are cheaper,and that ‘young professionals’ aren’t interested. Really, ALL the residents are like that? Odd then that ALL public libraries are well-used, popular venues in their communities.
That suggests to me that you don’t know the value of the information a wide range of library clients are helped with – it can be vital to them.
And that you don’t value why that help needs to be free.
And that libraries are civic spaces – quite different in character and purpose to commercial spaces. So to say that “they’ve got a CBD’s worth of opportunities on their doorstep. They’re more likely to run across their neighbours in a local restaurant, a bar, or even Costco” is fine, but perhaps you might think again, about the value and particular uses of civic spaces.
… relative to the scale of the project – “Australia’s largest urban development, and is expected to be home to 40,000 residents” (SMH 26/2/2013) – this a very modest proposal.
Cost of the build is at a premium due to being u/ground, which always costs heaps more. But its probably an economical use of the space, given land values in Sydney. My initial feeling is that the project demands a diligent oversight; that budgeted cost is likely to blow.
Also: public space of any kind should be defended. Civil society, the polis etc is contingent upon it. Otherwise we’re reduced to a society of atomised individuals huddled over touchscreens in our apartments (always been horrified by the etymology of that last word).
Anyways: if the total project has been designed properly by Council, the developers (who will make an absolute motza here) will be the ones paying for the provision of public amenity.
You mentioned Brisbane City Council library system. This is an excellent system that operates across Brisbane. It has increasingly been relocating libraries to shopping centres where there is a large amount of passing traffic. They also allow people to pay any form of bill owed to the council, as well as providing a wide range of services. They tend to be incredibly busy – but they are also an oasis of relative calm in a shopping centre.
My city council has recently spent $44 Million on an enormous sport and aquatic centre a lot of which just duplicates what local private gyms alrealdy offer and at a similar price. I’m unlikely to ever darken its doors. Of all the things local government spends money on, the libraries are my favourite.
Alan, thank you for your kind words about Yarra Plenty Regional Library. Thank you also for initiating this discussion about the relevance and contribution of libraries in modern-day society. It’s an extremely important one not only in general discourse, but for libraries themselves. (Although I think it’s interesting to note that if this was a sports facility that it would probably not even garner a mention.)
Relevance and contribution in a rapidly changing environment is already a consideration that is high on the agenda for libraries. Libraries have already done an excellent job of remaining relevant as times change. The fact that people still visit in droves and our membership and borrowing statistics are better than ever is proof of this.
These days, libraries play an increasingly important role in literacy and development, digital literacy and informal lifelong/life-wide learning. Nearly half the population struggles without the literacy skills to meet the most basic demands of everyday life and work. Forty six percent of Australians can’t read newspapers, follow a recipe, make sense of timetables, or understand instructions on a medicine bottle. Children who use their local public library are twice as likely to be above average readers.
Librarians have also adapted and boast new skills. With less call for traditional reference queries, they excel in content curation: they distil the universe of matter on the Internet into usable information. They are still guiding people with knowledge, but in different ways. “Libraries assist in finding, using and interpreting appropriate information that opens up opportunities for lifelong learning, literacy enhancement, informed citizenship, recreation, creative imagination, individual research, critical thinking, and ultimately, empowerment in an increasingly complex world,” according to an IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) sreport on the role of libraries in creation of literate environments.
The help is also practical. Yes there are e-books, but every day people are bringing new mobile phones, ipads and e-readers to the library for help learning how to use them.
The key point is that libraries are available to everyone. Libraries have always been a social leveler. There’s no ‘first class’, no priority ‘health’ care. In any public library anywhere, a business woman and an unemployed person are welcomed in the same way and have the same access to resources and services.
Christine Mackenzie
CEO Yarra Plenty Regional Library
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) governing board member
Thanks, Christine, for your informative account of how librarians are formulating their raison d’etre at the present day. Thanks especially for “coming out” as a librarian (that is, declaring your interest) in the context of this discussion.
Just wondering if boscombe and others have a similar sort of interest (undeclared) fuelling their anger at Alan for daring to raise, incidentally and gently, legitimate questions about the ongoing relevance of libraries and their associated (very generously paid) professional grouping.
Look, I was always with the highly skilled farriers in the age of the Model T, and I can certainly excuse a lot of reflexive defensiveness, but the conversation about The Library Profession’s long term future has to be had.
And as he ably points out himself, Alan’s main concern here is quite distinct from that can of worms: he’s questioning the appropriateness of a particular public expenditure on infrastructure, and he sure is pretty good imo at doing that sort of thing evenhandedly.
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