Newcastle: A City Reborn

Australia’s former steel city is being stoked back to life, fuelled by a mix of entrepreneurial flair, community spirit, booming health and education sectors, and, of course, money.

- Karen Mcghee

It’s a far cry from what Marcus Westbury found when he returned to his hometown a decade ago. “You could have shot a cannon down Hunter Street [Newcastle’s main thoroughfare] and not hit anyone!” recalls the Melbourne-based broadcaster, writer and urban renewal advocate. “I was shocked.” That was late 2007, eight years after the BHP-owned steelworks that defined and employed much of Newcastle for most of the 20th century shut down. Marcus, who’d visited regularly after moving away during the early 2000s, walked the city centre, past graffiti-besmirched walls and boarded-up shop fronts and counted 150 empty buildings. “There were some really self-perpetuating dynamics happening here,” he says. “Because everything was empty, no-one wanted to open anything and this sort of bad feedback had come into play.”

The unhealthy, but reassuringly reliable, smoke plumes from the steelworks’ exhaust stacks that once hung over Newcastle had gone. But in their place a huge cloud of malaise seemed to be stifling the city. It led to Marcus setting up the not-for-profit project Renew Newcastle. “We started working with some of the owners of those vacant properties to lend them to creative and community projects,” he explains. “There’s been something in the order of 270 projects launched at more than 80 properties in the decade since then, and a lot of those have gone on to become viable businesses. That collective effect has played a big role in inspiring confidence and getting more people to move back into and set up shop in the city.”

The Renew project has since become a template for cities in other parts of the world undergoing economic rebirth and Marcus went on to consult with many of them. He’s currently CEO of the Collingwood Arts Precinct urban revitalisation project in Melbourne.