The Ideas Hatchery event was a fun and stimulating opportunity to share your ideas on the topic “Right to the city”.
Should you feel like you missed out and would like to make a contribution, please share with us your idea what the “Right to the city” means to you.
Send us your idea either directly to Daniella (email daniella (at) urbansynergiesgroup.org or simply post it on our Facebook or LinkedIn page. We harvest ideas until the 10th June 2016.
The following ideas and suggestion may benefit the process of creating a better bicycling strategy and hopefully healthier urban fabrics in the long run. However it’s also based on the assumption that content research, data collection has been undertaken for your particular local government area prior overlaying these suggestions.
A good bicycling strategy should carry through a compelling lifestyle message that is aligned with the long- term vision of your city or municipality e.g. a sustainable, prosperous, healthy and liveable. This needs to be supported by strong and imaginative visuals throughout the strategy and I don’t mean just male dominated sport cyclists.
Be clear about your most powerful message in your current political environment of your city. Have a realistic target and focus on how do get there- this should be the new reality on the horizon of your urban environment. Have an integrated and whole of government approach as part of the exercise.
Prevent unrealistic expectation by communicating projected budget allocations early. As long you don’t have the money you will find it hard to implement actions.
Instead of focusing on the issues, celebrate the potential benefits that every member of the community will have because of this strategy. For example economical benefits, CO2 emission savings, less road network congestions, less air and noise pollution, social inclusion, safer, health benefits, happier and more child friendly environments.
Stylish easy to read graphs, facts, simple and consistent language/ terminology should make it easy for all members of the community to understand the bicycling strategy.
Use before and after shots or photomontages, illustrate in sections of the strategy different bicycle users in different problem situation and show what you might be able to do about it as part of the strategy.
Include holistically active and meaningful engagement opportunities for the community members and stakeholders groups. For example arrange sessions where the existing users are: coffee shops, at street festivals, at workplaces, in schools and universities, at popular bicycle destinations. No one knows a network better than the people who are using it every day.
Most importantly ensure that the community is empowered, feels that you have heard them and you understand what needs to be done. Therefore effective prioritisation and inclusion of innovative concepts support commitment and vision.
Do it proper in the first instance as it will save you a lot of hassle and time later!
Evidence suggested that people that are more physical active as part of their daily routine enjoy incredible physical and mental health benefits. Harness this energy and celebrate the civil community through colourful and inclusive images that aim to mainstream bicycling in your community. Make sure images are from your local community and are high in quality. Do this in the strategy documents, at consultation sessions as well as use these images for campaigns afterwards.
Demonstrate in easy to read maps that you are seeking to create a network of convenience for bicycle users. Make sure that members of the community understand that is very much part of an ongoing conversation and by no means a map that is set in stone. You are keen to hear more and create ongoing conversation channels with the community e.g. bicycle hotline, online portal, Bicycle Advisory group to the government. Utilise projects that are already working in the city very well and celebrate these early wins and commit to what you can do with projected budget in the future and perhaps do it even better!
Branding is very much part of the contemporary zeitgeist and if you are committed to make a valuable contribution to a bicycle revolution- show leadership by creating with the community a unique and strong brand label. Supported by a strong slogan or claim this should be included and integrated in many of your city programs e.g. tourism (cups, t-shirts, stickers, flags), active transport (stencilled on the paths, displayed on traffic messaging boards, in busses), health messaging (TV adds, workplaces), infrastructure provision (in bus shelters, on water bubblers, light poles, community message boards, shop fronts).
Comfort and safety comes first -provide options on how to achieve realistic, sustainable and better network maintenance. Demonstrate pride and include some of your local government staff members from the maintenance team in the strategy and communication e.g. in images showing them at work.
As one size doesn’t fit all – address what want people perceive as a serious safety barrier to bicycling more often. Stick with the realistic arguments, as we won’t be able to change the weather. Apply the following hierarchy:
Showcase solutions such as some big-ticket items e.g. new separated off road bike lane or child friendly neighbourhoods, as well as small but effective ways that can have a big impact e.g. bike priority on intersection.
The contemporary urban society is often suffering on the perceived issue of not enough time and therefore you need to think about of ways how to improve the real time travelled on bicycles in a direct and effective manner. A dear colleague of mine Dr Paul Tranter has done some excellent work on “effective speeds” in urban environments and strongly suggests getting hold of some of his research findings.
As part of demonstrating the benefits of short travel times on bike perhaps think about the introduction of digital message boards that display travel times for bicyclist compared to vehicles along selected routes. This can be powerful in creating strong messages for behaviour change.
Focus also on how people may go further and quicker by considering new infrastructure such as bicycle highways in appropriate parts your city, or better integration with other means of travel e.g. bike’n’ride or bike racks on all busses.
10. Summary
Make sure you are able to have a summary of your entire strategy on one page available. This should include referencing of modal split as well as cross- references to head topics in the strategy itself with projected targets. Include links to the ongoing communication stream. This is useful for you in meetings and for every stakeholder or interested party to advocate for the collective ideas to make your city a better, healthier and more liveable place.
Let’s face it – the ‘dry’ and not so sexy stuff in urban design matters too. Of course is good fun to talk about quality urban design outcomes and the colourful bicycle culture..but..if we want to be serious about providing a healthy environment for us and for future generations we need to make sure that we treat Canberra as a collection of small towns with one higher services centre (civic), many of the with they own set of shops, commercial, businesses and most importantly utilise the different community wisdom – working together in the spirit of empowerment, collaboration and content awareness.
Who are we?
In the year 2006, 333,940 people lived and spread over 2,358 square km in the ACT with a population density of 142.1 people per square km. This is overall for a capital city exceptionally low and provides a number challenges in terms to providing equal services to it’s population in particular with its growing Greenfield developments, with regards to our sustainability paradigm and health to is residents.
What can we celebrate?
It is also quite remarkable that we can enjoy access to some of the country highly regarded institutions such as the National Library, National Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, National Film and Sound Archives, Australian National University etc.
I’d like to point out that the word ‘national’ occurs frequently in the names and underpins Canberra’s status as the national capital with significance. In other words the average Canberra household is living predominantly a small town environment with a comparable excellent access level to formal social infrastructure. Often referred to overall comparable high quality lifestyle.
Having mentioned all that it becomes self evident that we can treat Canberra as a collection of towns with national significance.
Let’s cross-reference internationally!
Germany and Australia- despite two major differences a) a 20 year policy head start and b) most of the collective dwelling history started before the age of car – I’d like to compare the earlier mentioned set of data to one of Germany’s largest regional district called Landkreis Potsdam- Mittelmark in the state of Brandenburg. Its size is approximately 2,575 square km with a population of 204,594 (2010). Population density account to 79 people per square km.-
A closer look!
Let me draw for you a better picture of the Landkreis Potsdam Mittelmark. The region contains ten largish towns (more than 10,000 people each) spread over the area. Given that it’s geographically closely connected to state capital Potsdam, which has similar amount formal institution as Canberra (UNESCO world cultural heritage) and offers a high level of sophisticated services to its population.
So if you add up Potsdam’s stats with these from the Landkreis we achieve an overall geographical size of 2,762.38 square km and overall population of 359,200. The city has a density of 825 people per square km and allows a high level of green transport choices including light, heavy rail, busses – hint economy of scale- as well as a excellent network of walking and cycling infrastructure.
How are we actually performing?
In both cases, the ACT and Potsdam/ Landkreis Potsdam Mittelmark, provide similar service level, commercial activities and offer public transport for its residents. Each suburb/town has a slightly different spirit and mix of interest groups, but interestingly both perform differently through comparing energy and transport matters in a spatially sense?
Both have a large amount of national park or conservation areas, Potsdam and Potsdam Mittelmark 25 in total- Canberra with the National Capital Open Space System and Alpine Parks in the south.
The share of renewable energy sources in the German case increased in just 6 years from 4.2 % (2000) to 34,4 % (2006). The latest data shows a further increase to 47 % in 2008. Due to the average 4.2 to 4.7 hours sunshine per day, they use a mix of renewable energy sources ranging from biomass, wind, solar and geothermal. Simultaneously the overall electricity consumption is declining, made possible through effective communication, empowerment, collaboration, new technologies leading to behaviour change resulting in 3.3 tonnes of CO2 per capita.
Canberra invested recently a lot in solar energy with its individual subsidies/ feed in- tarif and the recent announcement to construct it’s first large scale solar facility. Also the ACT Government released recently its ‘Weathering the Change Action Plan Stage 2’ strategy and is currently using 9.2 global hectares per capita (2009), of which is 12 % is electricity related consumption.
Transport wise the German case ranges from 37% private vehicle share in Potsdam and 50 % private vehicle as the choice of transport in the regional area. This means even in an environmentally aware society the car will still have a role to play in the short to medium term.
However the difference between Potsdam and its surrounding regional area indicates that the car doesn’t have to be the king.
In a built environment that is compact enough to create convenience for all it’s people, with a diversity of land uses, high quality destinations, quality open space network it is possible to reach a higher modal split (20 % bicycle, 23 % walking, 20% public transport). In areas further away from Potsdam, compact towns achieve a share of 30 % people walking and bicycling and 8 % public transport. It is also important to mention that there is a gap in the modal share as the rest may use heavy rail to get into the main centre. The current methods of data collection point out that lack of data.
In terms of the Canberra case – the ‘Transport for Canberra’ strategy indicated a historical car dominance and commitment to create a better and more equitable as well as holistic transport network choices through a bus- and potentially light rail network. There is also a solid amount of active travel work integrated.
Canberra’s modal split in 2006 was 5 % walking, 2.5 % cycling, 7.9 % public transport and 84.6 % private vehicle. The new target is to have 7% walking, 7% cycling and 16 % public transport by 2026.
This is very ambitious as it refers to travel to work trips only and in accordance to the research findings of Jan Gehl around 80 % of active travel trips are account for not work related trips.
Strong links with the planning strategy have been taken into consideration and a commitment to a compact city approach is welcome.
But the work has really just started, if we want get rid of the white elephant!
In conclusion both cases are comparable on a number of items, the German case shows a lot of success stories with a history of 10 years in good policy implementation – in accordance to Agenda 21- that supports innovative governance and cooperation rather a traditional government approach.
Citizen control, delegated power and partnerships are needed to ensure overall success.
However, in the German case not everything worked out either, because one big limitation was the financial disparity between remote areas and the urban centre.
The ACT Government is showing a great deal of commitment and honest intend (strategies are in place)- let’s just hope that on implementation level structural disparities can be bridged and good outcomes achieved by a) acknowledging the spatial differences and b) achieving a good governance model that embraces and supports collective community wisdom.
Better urban planning would improve Canberrans’ health, according to leading experts at the second Active Living forum yesterday.
The idea of a ”biophilic” city design, which would move the city from car dependence, is being championed by the ACT Heart Foundation as another way to encourage locals to be active.
More than half of the territory’s residents are overweight or obese and environment and sustainability expert Darren Bilsborough said prioritising public transport would have massive economic and health benefits
The costs of obesity are growing and in 2008, the annual cost of being overweight in Australia, including health system costs, productivity declines and carers’ costs, was estimated at about $58 billion.
The adjunct professor from Curtin University said his research showed people who commuted more than one hour to work each way experienced negative heath impacts, including depression and weight gain.
The solution was to rip up roads and use that space for trams and additional housing in city centres.
”You can have 240 people getting to work in 177 cars, or three buses, for that same amount of people on one tram,” Professor Bilsborough said.
”When you get rid of cars, you need fewer roads and you can use that space for other things … There are lots of roads and lots of concrete and that’s where [Canberra] falls over. The real issue is getting more people more active more quickly and to do that you need to get more cars off the road and get more public transport working,” he said.
Professor Bilsborough said the ACT government should allocate priority bus lanes throughout the city.
”There has to be less preference to cars. You go to places like New York and London and it’s very difficult to get around in a car; the preferential use is public transport,” he said. Heart Foundation ACT chief executive Tony Stubbs said the ACT government’s Transport for Canberra Strategy made the link between public transport and health.
It sets targets of 15-minute bus frequency on the territory’s arterial roads and 30-minute public transport services within a 5-10 minute walk of every resident by 2021. Also, by 2016 the ACT government wants almost a quarter of all journeys to and from work to be on bike, foot or its upgraded public transport system – bus, tram or light rail.
Mr Stubbs said it was achievable if the government set aside funding in the June budget and to ”build physical activity into our days”.
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/health-expert-urges-change-of-heart-over-cars-20120508-1ybff.html#ixzz1uKZnqdn6
Australia’s population is expected to reach 35 million by 2050 and the nation’s regional towns will play an important role in supporting sustainable growth and connecting people with employment hubs. Transit-oriented development will be pivotal in ensuring that regional centres remain healthy and sustainable communities as they continue to grow. We had the chance to catch up with Greg Mews, Active Living Coordinator at the Heart Foundation and speak about the complex interrelationship between urban and transit planning, density and public health.
Question: What planning and transport parameters do regional towns need to consider to encourage active and healthy communities today and in the future?
Before I am able to answer this question I’d like to highlight that we cannot continue with our current “business as usual” approach to policies and strategies. We are facing a number of significant challenges in transport, climate change, liveability and public health. As for public health challenges, the rates of overweight and obese Australian adults has doubled over the past two decades, with Australia now ranked as one of the fattest of the developed nations. Overweight and obesity affects about one in two Australian adults and up to one in four children. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the country, with almost 50,000 deaths in 2008. CVD is responsible for more deaths than any other disease group.
Regular physical activity plays an important role in promoting healthy weight and reducing the risk of cardiovascular and other lifestyle-related diseases. Conversely, sedentary behaviours at home, in transit and at work are independently linked with overweight, obesity and poor health.
For this reason the 2010 National Preventative Health Task Force report, “Australia: the healthiest country by 2020“, identified the need to reshape urban environments through consistent town planning and building design that encourages greater levels of participation in physical activity and through appropriate infrastructure investments in walking, biking, food supply and recreation.
The World Health Organization reports that one-third of physical inactivity can be prevented by changing the local environment alone. This means across the board we need rethink our approaches around planning and design of the built environment, including open spaces, health, active transport, sustainability in infrastructure and activation of other resources that activate the public realm. We have been able to engineer physical activity out of our daily routines and are now paying the price for it. Physical inactivity costs the health budget an estimate of $1.5bn a year and the economy $13bn a year.
Sedentary behaviours are influenced by increasing car dependency, built environments that do not support active and healthy lifestyles, an increasing reliance on advancing technology and modern conveniences, and occupations that impose prolonged sitting times. One study found that each additional hour spent in a car each day was associated with a six per cent increase in the likelihood of obesity. Conversely, each additional kilometre walked per day was associated with a five per cent reduction in the likelihood of obesity.
Regional towns and cities will have a very important role to play in encouraging a more active and healthy lifestyle. The 2011 State of Australian cities report confirmed that older Australians are moving away from cities with a similar trend among younger Australians and higher skilled people moving to near-city and coastal regional areas. If we are committed to achieving healthier and more active communities we need to ensure all people including the elderly, the young, and the disabled, have equal access opportunities to convenient and safe active transport systems that are supported by innovative land use forms.
Question: How can walking and cycling be better integrated with existing transport modes?
There are plenty of examples from around the globe and increasingly from within Australia showcasing innovation in better integration of active travel into existing networks. Perth has now a good head start in experimenting with transport-oriented developments and the South Australian Government released last year their guideline documents called “Transit-oriented developments…through a health lens“. The ACT government just endorsed the Transport for Canberra Strategy, which is truly an integrated strategy that offers a lot of good solutions.
However these are all prominent projects that demonstrate leadership in absence of a clear overall direction from the federal government. What we need is an integrated national active transport strategy, established by an independent national active transport authority, which embraces policies and planning for walking, cycling and public transport. This will be instrumental in providing consistent framework and help to overcome the current challenges.
Question: Density is often stated as a crucial factor when it comes to providing regular and reliable transport services. Thinking globally, what are the most creative approaches you have seen in improving access to public and active transport infrastructure in low density regions?
Greg Mews: Paul Mees the author of “Transport for suburbia” (read a book review here) might be the best person to ask this questions but from a planning/design perspective “density” or as I’d like to refer it to “compact built form” can be beneficial to achieve reliable transport services if done right. What does this mean? It’s more about diversity around land use and density rather than radical densification. If corridor intensification is the chosen option to achieve better public transport service outcomes then it must be:
a) balanced with a mixed form of land use, which helps to reduce distance travelled;
b) come with good traffic regulations and enforcement (parking restrictions etc.);
c) the urban design in corridors and around hubs need to be in human scale, with quality open space and quality architecture;
d) In particular in the Australian context we need to overcome the thinking that public transport stops need to be attached or next to highways or main roads;
e) Foremost any development within an existing/ established neighbourhood environment needs to have the support of a representative majority of the community.
However I’d like to refer to two cities, which have done an excellent job in achieving innovative results around improving access to active and public transport. First is Freiburg in Germany, most people may already studied or heard of the district Vauban, where they achieved in an extraordinary exemplar case to reverse the transport hierarchy, which means people first, then bicycles, then public transport and private vehicle last. If you think this could not be achieved in an English speaking country I’d like to highlight the exemplar case of the city of Portland, Oregon USA.
Question: What constitutes good levels of density from a health and active living perspective?
Greg Mews: I hope my previous question answered this to a degree. However I’ve recently taken part in a conference of the Urban Age project, a global investigation into the futures of our cities, organised by the London School of Economics. Under the umbrella “Cities, health and wellbeing” we discussed density and the impacts on human health in the case of Hong Kong with its hyper density and very efficient public transport system. We found that this is a rather inherently complex issue.
Knowledge exchange around latest evidence, evaluation, research and strategies is essential in finding a local solution to the issue. Wherever I have worked the local climate, culture, ecosystem, planning systems were very unique and evidence as well as local knowledge seems to me the most sensible way forward in determining the best density and health outcomes for a city.
On that note I might say that the Heart Foundation has just released a report on precisely this matter. In May 2012 we will also publish our Active Living Impact Checklist for developments that can help achieving better outcomes for physical activity on site specific level. Healthy Spaces and Places, the national guide to designing places for healthy living, developed in the unique partnership between the Planning Institute of Australia, the Australian Local Government Association as well as the Heart Foundation, offers a range of solutions and ideas for healthier neighbourhoods in Australia.
Question: You will be presenting at the inaugural Regional Transport conference, to be held on the 22nd and 23rd May at the Gold Coast. What discussions would you like to have with industry peers at the forum?
Greg Mews: In order to increase walking, cycling and public transport use it is necessary to reduce car use. I’d be very curious to have an informed discussion around how we can achieve the most cost effective way in delivering an improved public transport service that offers a real alternative to the private vehicle in the Australian context. Only if we make active travel an easy and convenient option we have a chance to overcome many of our current challenges.
Changing the economics of car use towards a system that encourages a more rational consideration of modal choice might be a way forward. As well as having a debate around transport modelling for regional areas to ensure that the models represent travel and location behaviour in an effective manner. Variables such as physical activity need to be included as well as cost effectiveness of making changes to the existing modelling system.
More under the following link http://www.informa.com.au/conferences/transport/infrastructure/regional-transport/interview-with-greg-mews
