Public Luxury

The State Library of Victoria (SLV) conceded it had “created unintended concerns” with its proposal to cut 39 jobs and reduce services to focus on more “digital experiences”.

Musician Nick Cave was among 220 distinguished names to sign an open letter calling for the board to explain the restructure, which would have halved the number of reference librarians, from 25 to 10.

In a statement, board president Christine Christian said the library had “decided to withdraw” the proposal after “careful consideration of feedback”.

“Our focus will remain on strengthening services, modernising operations and ensuring the library continues to thrive as a leading home for history, arts, culture and knowledge for the next generation,” she said.

Imagine designing one of our great cities from scratch. You would quickly discover that there is enough physical space for magnificent parks, playing fields, public swimming pools, urban nature reserves and allotments sufficient to meet the needs of everyone. Alternatively, you could designate the same space to a small proportion of its people – the richest citizens – who can afford large gardens, perhaps with their own swimming pools. The only way of securing space for both is to allow the suburbs to sprawl until the city becomes dysfunctional: impossible to supply with efficient services, lacking a sense of civic cohesion, and permanently snarled in traffic: Los Angeles for all.

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It is impossible to deliver a magnificent life for everyone by securing private space through private spending. Attempts to do so are highly inefficient, producing ridiculous levels of redundancy and replication. Look at roads, in which individual people, each encased in a tonne of metal, each taking up (at 70mph) 90 metres of lane, travel in parallel to the same destination. The expansion of public wealth creates more space for everyone; the expansion of private wealth reduces it, eventually damaging most people’s quality of life.