Permit Granted
July's headline approvals, rubber-stamped and ready.
If demolitions are the island’s evening entertainment, the approvals are its morning news, and July’s roster does not disappoint.
Witness the alchemy by which two storeys become five, a back garden becomes a footprint, and a development “in keeping with the streetscape” turns out to keep nothing of the streetscape at all. Marvel at the elegant choreography of the late-Friday decision, the objection logged and noted and gently set aside, the policy interpreted with a flexibility that would shame a gymnast.
The renders are a genre unto themselves. Admire the impossibly blue sky, the slender well-dressed couple on a balcony that does not yet exist, the single decorative tree that will not survive the first summer. No two are alike, and yet, somehow, all of them are.
Bring your imagination. Where you see a quiet corner, the file sees nine units and a basement. Where you see a skyline, the file sees opportunity. It is a kind of magic, performed in triplicate, and the show (reassuringly for some, alarmingly for everyone else) goes on all year.
