"Indulgent thing to do": Garry Egger on personal training. Photo: Darren Pateman
If you want to pit a Sydneysider against his fellow citizen, try uttering the words ''personal trainers in parks'' and watch the spittle fly.
In the increasingly blurred zone between public and private, nothing, it seems, divides the city like a lycra-clad Adonis with a stopwatch giving orders to grunting, paying customers in a communal park.
Fitness expert Garry Egger brought tensions to a head this week when he described personal training as a ''middle-class, indulgent thing to do''.
Egger, who wrote Australia's physical activity guidelines in 1999, urged councils to crack down on operators who ''interfere with other people's right to common recreational services''.
His position polarised readers and left many shaking their heads. In these days of rising inactivity and obesity levels, what could be wrong with people paying to get fit and drop a few kilos, albeit in public?
And who wouldn't want to ring in the day with 100 abdominal crunches at Bondi Beach or Hyde Park, rather than inside a stale gym?
At the heart of the debate lies a traditional, high-minded notion of public space that many Sydneysiders seem strangely attached to.
At its loftiest, public space enables democracy, and should be open to everyone.
So when fitness groups pay for the right to section off areas of grass with witches hats, or run 12 abreast along the beach and leave no room for others, in some small way, the rights of others are diminished.
Of course, private activity in public places is not always cause for alarm. Few could object to a footpath flower seller, a kiosk on the beach or markets that revive a rundown square.
But across Sydney, skirmishes are erupting as people debate the right way to use the public realm.
At Darling Point, residents are taking court action against Woollahra Council claiming that weddings in McKell Park - for which couples pay a small fee to the council - are disturbing their peace.
In a speech to the NSW upper house this week, Labor MP Luke Foley decried the ''prostitution'' of the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, large tracts of which he said were given over to an open-air cinema and, from next weekend, the opera Carmen, tickets to which cost up to $325.
Authorities and organisers could argue such events are staged for the public good and open up the park to people who might not otherwise use it.
But Foley says the pendulum has swung too far, and the land should be quarantined for public use for all but one month of the year.
When public space becomes dependent on commercial revenue, that is when dangers can arise, says University of Sydney public space expert Kurt Iveson.
He points to parklands across Sydney, which are embracing commercial models as government funding dwindles.
Centennial Park - which receives 4 per cent of its annual operating budget from the state government, down from 20 per cent a decade ago - relies heavily on revenue-generators such as Moore Park and Fox Studios.
Iveson says it could be the thin end of the wedge. He cites the US, where cash-strapped authorities have created ''business improvement districts'', where public areas are maintained and operated by private interests.
''Often these districts operate public places in a very exclusionary manner, so they have more and more control over the terms of access. It means certain activities become illegal, and certain people can be moved on,'' he said.
As backyards shrink, free, open spaces such as parks and beaches will become increasingly congested. Only if social imperatives continue to vanquish the financial will everyone find their patch of grass in the sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment