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Ho-hum, another artist's impression appears of what a re-imagined area of Sydney could be ('Plan shines a light on Haymarket', August 14). Having just returned from the Covent Garden area of London, there are a few more components required for our Haymarket than a cluster of Asian restaurants amid strings of lanterns. The area around Convent Garden comprises at least 10 major theatres and museums, which are the magnet to the area. Around Sydney, most of us are lucky to have pretty good Asian restaurants and suppliers where we live. It is hardly worthwhile to travel to this end of town to eat a Thai meal on the pavement opposite the Capitol theatre. The precinct needs to offer a couple of other theatres as an adjunct to the area's single live venue. Fairy lights and a few more Asian restaurants would not attract someone from the suburbs or even nearby Barangaroo/ Darling Harbour, but a vibrant theatre district would give a more balanced reason to go there.
Greg Vale, Kiama
I suggest the City of Sydney not waste taxpayers' money trying to create a new commercial Asian-themed precinct in Haymarket. Restaurants and vitality are more organic than this and they spring up where people have access to them and will provide patronage – think of Harris Park, Cabramatta, Lakemba or Burwood. Plans like these for Haymarket, while probably well-intentioned, remain artificial and generally look and feel to have a contrived air about them.
Dale Bailey, Five Dock
The mandatory artist's impression of the proposals for Haymarket and Thai Town shows
hanging lanterns hovering above the road and pedestrian space. This is an undoubtedly beautiful image, one probably proposed by a designer who has travelled widely in Europe and Asia, where it is possible to attach the necessary supporting cables to adjacent buildings. In Australia, however, this is rarely possible for a range of structural, legal and bureaucratic reasons. This means that poles specifically and exclusively used for the cable attachment become necessary, and these are usually expensive additions that gobble up the art budget and detract from the worth of the artwork. The piece at the Parramatta Road end of Norton Street is an example of this, where a beautiful floating sculpture is suspended from big fat poles that take up half the footpath. Similar columns were needed for the 'clouds' of Lindy Lee's Garden of Cloud and Stone in Thomas Street in Chinatown. These concepts need more thought.
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