Newcastle hailed as a model for other cities facing industrial changeFIFTEEN years ago, the Australian coastal city of Newcastle, just north of Sydney, faced a grim and uncertain future as its once thriving steel industry came to an end.迷你倉出租For a city that had long been known as "the steel city", the closure of its BHP steelworks marked the end of an industry which had once employed 13,000 people. The BHP plant opened in 1915 and employed generations of steelworkers before winding down operations in 1999 as new technologies made the plant uncompetitive.But the city has not looked back.In a tale of urban recovery that is proving to be a model for other cities facing large-scale industrial change, the greater city of 550,000 people has transformed from a largely working- class city to one focused on education, health care and tourism.In recent weeks, as Australia's biggest carmaker, Holden, announced it was closing its plants in Melbourne and Adelaide, Newcastle has been cited as an inspiration by everyone from the state Premier of New South Wales, Mr Barry O'Farrell, to the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott.Over the past decade, property prices in Newcastle have surged, tourists have flooded in, prize-winning architects have helped to redesign the waterfront and the city's university has expanded. In 2011, Newcastle even ranked in the world's top 10 cities to visit in a list compiled by the travel guide publisher Lonely Planet.A former lord mayor, Mr John Tate, who retired in 2012 and ran the city during the steelworks closure, said he had strong memories of the "deafening silence" of the plant on the day it closed.He said journalists had asked him, "Is this the end of Newcastle?", to which he replied, "No, this city has a future.""The transformation has been dramatic - it opened up new opportunities and new horizons," he told The Straits Times."It caused us to think beyond BHP and made us work harder as a community... We have gone from a navy-blue singlet workforce to a white-collar and trades workforce."On the city's waterfront, a stretch of abandoned former rail yards has been converted into the Honeysuckle development that features hotels, apartments, restaurants and bars. New hotels continue to go up in the inner city and along the beachfront.Mr Tate said the rejuvenation depended on close cooperation with BHP, which assisted with the retraining of workers and kept the authorities informed as its operations wound down gr迷你倉dually throughout the 1980s and 1990s.Tourism also benefited from improved air quality around the harbour as the plant closed, and from the city's proximity to the nearby wine region of the Hunter Valley, he said."As a community, we knew it was coming," he said."When the workers walked out of the gate, you could see in their faces there was apprehension but there was confidence... I always said that tourism was our great opportunity."But the revival and retraining of workers also depended on a close working relationship between then prime minister John Howard and the unions - a group which he usually opposed. The federal and state governments contributed to a taskforce to promote the local economy and put more than A$10 million (S$11.3 million) into a fund to kick-start job-creating opportunities.The University of Newcastle is now the highest-ranked Australian university outside a capital city and is expanding its campus. It has a campus in Singapore, where it began operating in 2002. The airport has gone from being a "tin shed" one to a large commercial hub, with passenger numbers increasing from 214,000 in 2003 to almost 1.2 million in 2012. The region's mines have benefited from increased coal prices and the port is one of the world's biggest coal terminals.Unemployment levels there dropped from 7.3 per cent in 2006 to 5.4 per cent last September - even as Australia's unemployment rose during the same period from 5.2 per cent to 5.7 per cent.A Newcastle-based commentator, Mr Ian Kirkwood, said last month that the BHP closure "turned out to be a good thing"."The economy didn't wither or collapse, it quickly grew and diversified," he wrote in The Newcastle Herald. "With the belching smoke... no longer polluting the atmosphere, the skies were suddenly, and literally, brighter."Newcastle's recovery is now seen as a model for other cities facing similar fates.Last year, the city of Geelong, near Melbourne, turned to "the Newcastle experience" as it began to prepare for the closure of a Ford car plant involving the loss of 1,200 jobs.Last month, Mr Abbott cited Newcastle's post-BHP rejuvenation as a model for Melbourne and Adelaide, the two cities which will lose jobs as a result of carmaker Holden's decision to stop manufacturing in Australia from 2017."They will not go from one job to no job," he told ABC Radio last month, referring to Holden's workers. "They will go from one job to a new job."jonathanmpearlman@gmail.commini storage
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