A healthier way to travel? Health expert believes breaking dependency on cars will improve Canberra’s health. Photo: Graham Tidy
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.
People need to engineer exercise into their daily routines, TONY STUBBS writes
We know that physical inactivity – apart from contributing to the nation’s obesity crisis – is a major health problem in its own right. Our current lifestyles are costly and can be deadly. Each year, physical inactivity costs the economy an estimated $13.8 billion, causes 16,000 premature deaths and carries a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, colon and breast cancer.
Evidence of the emphatic link between cardiovascular disease and physical inactivity dates back to the 1940s and, today, physical inactivity is the fourth leading contributor to the overall burden of disease nationally.
In the ACT, more than two-thirds of all adults do not get enough exercise to achieve health benefits. Results of the Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey showed three out of four year 6 students in Canberra do not achieve their recommended activity requirement each day.
n addition, the ACT chief health officer’s report in 2010 showed four in five children aged between 12 and 17 did not meet the national activity guidelines.
More than ever, investment and action is needed to encourage people to use active modes of transport – walking, cycling and public transport – to increase exercise and improve health outcomes for future generations. It is well recognised that investment in activity is the best buy in public health today.
The Heart Foundation has long advocated building physical activity into our daily lives. Being active – such as cycling or brisk walking – for just 30 minutes a day can halve your risk of cardiovascular disease.
We know people who use public transport have a good chance of getting their recommended level of physical activity during their travel.
Analysis of household travel data from the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity found people who use public transport on a particular day spent an average 41 minutes walking and/or cycling as part of their travel – five times more physical activity than those who only use private transport.
But how can we further change our nation’s capital from being a car-dependent city? How do we get more people to walk or ride a bike to school, work or other destinations? On a broader scale, how do we tackle the challenges of congestion, climate change, the liveability of our cities and public health?
The ACT government has made big strides in the right direction in the active transport agenda undertaking a broad range of initiatives to encourage walking and cycling as alternative modes of transport. It has injected serious dollars in local infrastructure to promote active transport including improved lighting and security around public transport hubs; better pedestrian access and bicycle storage facilities; and improved corridor planning on Northbourne and Constitution avenues.
The government is now a signatory of the International Charter for Walking, which has a strong commitment to increased inclusive mobility and creating a healthy culture for walking.
Most recently, the Transport for Canberra plan is to be commended for the inclusion of a high-level physical activity taskforce, a focus on creating a sustainable, compact Canberra and investment in physical activity projects with everything from pools to footpaths, bike tracks and sports grounds.
In addition, the government has helped the Heart Foundation’s active living project, which encourages initiatives for a built environment to promote the uptake of an active lifestyle. This project – combining expertise from planning, health, transport, landscape architecture, academic and urban design sectors – has been internationally recognised for its work to overcome barriers and identify opportunities to support a more active Canberra community.
We still have a challenging task ahead of us. There remains a desperate need to tackle our obesogenic environments head on – and that means ongoing investment in programs and infrastructure that will make the healthier transport choices – walking, cycling and public transport – the easier choices.
And we know what works. The evidence base is overwhelming and solid; comprising Australian and international programs and initiatives where communities, towns and cities have got people out of cars and into more active modes of transport, often in vast numbers.
We must work collaboratively with a whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach to tackle our physical inactivity and obesity epidemic. The Heart Foundation’s active living forum, to be held on May 8, will bring together professionals from the government, business and community disciplines to do just this. The focus of the forum will be to develop actions to design Canberra’s built environment to enable the ACT community to lead healthier, more active lifestyles.
We are the nation’s leader when it comes to the use of active transport, but only about 7.5 per cent of the Canberra population walk or cycle to work. We need to engineer physical activity into our daily routines to reverse these statistics. Our vision for the ACT to boost participation in walking, cycling and public transport involve:
■ A consistent implementation of the recommendations in the Transport for Canberra strategy and the planning strategy.
■ Sustained and targeted funding for infrastructure, such as continuation of the one-off $3 million for infrastructure announced last year.
■ Ongoing funding for programs and policies and other education and behaviour change initiatives.
The cost of driving change is high, but the human and economic costs of obesity and chronic disease are significantly higher. Britain’s then chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, made this resounding point back in 2010: ”I recommend that the threat of climate change should provide sufficient impetus for action to substantially increase walking and cycling as common forms of transport.”
Tony Stubbs is the chief executive of the Heart Foundation.
3 cars stop, 24 people cross the street and 7 bicycles cruise along within 10 seconds on a Friday afternoon in Bunda Street, Canberra. I am sitting in a street café overlooking a zebra crossing between the Canberra Centre and City Walk.
3 cars, 24 people and 7 bicycles – an interesting modal split that made me think about joining the dots and drawing a picture in regard to appropriate street design with people in mind.
My first dot will be around the latest initiative by the Australian Federal Government, which recently launched the National Urban Design Protocol with the ideal title “Creating places for people”. The document aims to define high quality urban design and to provide a consistent quality framework for future design throughout the country.
My second dot will provide a connection to this initiative and what happens (or still does not happen) on the ground. For example, the National Capital Authority recently announced a delay in rolling out an urban design project for Bowens Crossing until 2014, the year afterCanberra’s Centennary. The reason for the delay is cited as a funding shortfall resulting from major capital maintenance works to be undertaken on Scrivener Dam. It is unfortunate to see projects like Bowen Crossing postponed The Federal Government and theCanberracommunity should demand higher priority for quality urban design projects and the improvement of local amenities.
My third dot will be the apparent disconnect between budget reality, community expectation and future budget projections. Funding for urban planning and design projects will become increasingly scarce as competing priorities place pressure on the ACT Budget. I’d like to invite you to bear in mind, for example, that the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Health Directorate budget is increasing by 11 per cent per annum and in a ‘business as usual’ scenario will, according to Access Economics, consume the entire ACT Budget in the medium to long term.
Let’s start joining the dots and attempt to draw a picture. On the one hand, we are creating a strategic framework for better quality design to meet community expectations. On the other hand, we will have in the long run less funding to realise those expectations.
The picture that came out of connecting these dots is not good one. Here is my initial attempt to rescue the drawing to ensure quality spaces for all people.
a) I’d like to start by highlighting that there is no silver bullet solution to what is becoming an increasingly complex problem.
b) Education is key. In order to resolve a complex design issue we need to have a certain amount of common knowledge around the issue.
c) Potentially competing interests need to work hand in hand with a collaborative spirit to achieve designs that will benefit all members of the community.
d) Be creative, be open-minded and think outside of the square. There are no wrong questions.
Drawing a short initial exemplar illustration onBunda Streetas a shared space:
a) The advantages of making streets more people friendly are potentially far-reaching, encompassing environmental, social, economic and health benefits. Most academics and leading practitioners in various fields call for an integrated and holistic approach to issues such a climate change, non-renewable resources, food access as well as the obesity epidemic in Australia. A triple bottom line approach is necessary and needs more than just a single tool.
Of course every reader should feel encouraged to research further pending their level of interest.
c) Call out for a workshop that brings all parties together in a comfortable and neutral environment and share stories (personal or evidence based) about the importance of having equal access to good quality spaces for all members of the community in Canberra Civic.
d) Some creative ideas for Bunda Street as a high quality shared space:
–> Consider innovative pavement design using local recycled materials;
–> Use intelligent landscaping (trees, planting) to provide a green, balanced environment that can protect the space from the heat island effect.
–> Ask local stakeholders to commit to maintaining the new amenity. In addition to enjoying well maintained spaces, homeowners stand to benefit economically from quality urban design projects in their local neighbourhoods.
–> Think about human scale and imagine walking with a kid’s eye through the space. As an ideal outcome you should feel comfortable to move freely in the space and be able to communicate easily with other people.
–> Have in mind that we will have 20 + per cent elderly people by 2030 and consider the needs of disadvantaged groups.
–> The place should be considered as an open living room where people can celebrate, communicate and interact 24/7.
–> Think even of interesting signage that invites users to change their behaviour. This could be by having a big welcome sign saying, “You are entering the city’s open living room”.
e) Recently the South Australian Government announced the creation of an independent Commissioner for Integrated Design. Such a person could ideally provide the platform and framework of collaboration and facilitate the dialogue needed to achieve a satisfactory and truly democratic outcome.
3 cars stop, 24 people cross the street and 7 bicycles cruise along within 10 seconds on a Friday afternoon in Bunda Street, Canberra.
If we want to heal the Canberra pattern language we need to have a healthy balance between providing sufficient area for development within the existing footprint (commercial viability), efficient and convenient circulation and high quality social spaces.
The wound is deep!
The recent Hawke review of the ACT public service indicated that Canberra is 10 times less dense than Melbourne and Sydney, is one of the lowest density cities worldwide and less than one quarter of the ACT is suitable for development. The potential for significant urban redevelopment is apparent and key to enable efficient and convenient circulation systems.
What do I mean with that? Efficient movement allows all people to move from A to B in a fast way. However, convenient also includes what happens between A and B. So far Canberra has been successful in “perceived efficiency” to move people from A to B via cars. The implication on equal access and holistic safety to this form of movement by the population with a youth and aged perspective is concerning. Bus use is still far beyond being convenient for all members of the community and as the Ottawa example shows requires long- term support.
Car use just creates convenience for a small number of people per vehicle and degrades the space between A and B to a “desert quality” or when have you seen last time a good crowed of people having quality time on a medium stripe.
In other words people had for a very long time a very exclusive way of moving in space, which resulted in a 30 per cent increase in road infrastructure that needs to be maintained, not even to mention impacts on human health and their environment through air pollution, heat island affects, amount of sealed surfaces etc.
In search for a right medicine!
In the medium term future cars won’t disappear, but we need to tame the cars and change the pattern language in the city if we are serious live in a sustainable and healthy Canberra.
The street pattern and urban structure is important to determine the pattern of movement, setting the parameter for subsequent development and in contributing to an urban character.
Introducing a stronger movement hierarchy, plan under the banner of “city of short distances”, which allows people meet most of they needs in short walking/ cycling or public transport distances and maximise the opportunities of social spaces in between.
The Department for Transport in the UK adopted in 2007 a new movement hierarchy for their “Manual for streets”:
People;
Bike users;
Public transport;
Special service vehicle, car share and taxis;
Private cars.
The shape and size of an urban block is important in conjunction with basic typologies/ codes/ rules about physical parameters. Innovative and creative precinct plans can address these issues and are able to address social spaces that benefit all members of a community.
Indicator for getting healthy!
The greatest indicator of a disappearing wound is when you start seeing a wide range of people using urban spaces up to 24/7- simply more people living, ageing and socialising locally in very safe, pleasant and child friendly environment.
Be part of the healing process!
The ACT Government has released two key strategies for public comments. The ACT Planning strategy will set the direction around Canberras future pattern language and other urban design challenges. The Transport for Canberra strategy aim is to tame the car and providing a real opportunity to create equity in transport. The strategies can be found under http://www.timetotalk.act.gov.au/time-to-talk/. Make a difference – be an urbanist!
What connects people in cities and what makes cities places where you want to be? That is a question I’ve been asking myself since a long time.
Most urban dwellers consider themselves as individuals, which want to be unique in material manifestations such as clothing, goods and mindset.
However, cities play the unique role in terms of catering for everybody’s needs in the same an equal manner. A city provides spaces for the young and old members of the community as well as for disadvantaged groups.
Translating these individual needs into the public realm –the space that should provide spaces for all of us in a city – can enable liveable places. In liveable spaces everybody can celebrate their uniqueness on many places and it takes just a couple of simple mechanisms to achieve that.
1. A decent population density that can support economic viable use of infrastructure.
2. Be nice to people by providing sufficient spaces for them.
3. Design that space for the people by considering light, noise, scale and imageability.
For all the readers who may find that to abstracts please let me describe this through an simple comparison (metapher).
A person sits in a coffee shop, reads talks, enjoys good food and company. Overall most people feel quite nice once they are in them. Why, because all design components have been achieved. However, it should be noted that you need financial effort to benefit from them. First of all coffee shops are spaces for people, the scale of the establishment appears comfortable, leaves spaces for some privacy and they are considered to be very safe. The light is just right – not to strong and not too dark and the noise comes usually from other people and gentle music in the background. This noise level above 35 dbl enables a feeling for social inclusion and can help to reduce depression. Imageability can make a place unique.
Artworks, interesting structural elements, vegetation, view connections etc. are tools to allow individual imageability. Spaces that have special sense of place have some unique qualities that cannot be repeated on a large scale – the same in coffee shops. Just imagine all coffee shops would have the same artwork in them.
All these four elements should be possible in a liveable and healthy city. But even more important a coffee shop could not function without a good crowed that lives near by to fill it with live and the same rule applies to the city.
Canberra has the potential to have many of these high quality places for all members of the community if we are prepared to accept and support on our individual level the fact that we need a population higher density. This will allow Canberra to become a city for people – a healthy and more sustainable place to live it.
Other cities around the globe are already committed to create sustainable and liveable place for their people. The city of London started to ban cars in the city and applied mechanism to reduce car speeds. Copenhagen is introducing more and more spaces for active transport and is increasingly blocking spaces for cars. Freiburg new developments are people oriented developments, that are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. All these cases have one huge advantage – most individuals accepted higher density as the opportunity to create a better future for the coming generations so that they have even better and more liveable spaces to live in.
Sitting on Canberra’s beautiful Lake Burley Griffin on a Sunday afternoon with the sun hitting my nose and I look over towards the yacht club and the green landscape makes me think about Canberra as a resilient city?
Jared Diamond, an American leading scientist and author once described a possible future as follows:
“Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non- sustainable course, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetime of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease, epidemics, and collapse of societies.”
In relation to the future of Canberra it’s really our choice. Canberra is in a very lucky position to have a general well established and well- educated middle class with the highest average income in Australia. Committed community leaders want to drive change from the bottom up.
The city prediction is geared up towards growth, the ACT government undertook an enormous community consultation “Canberra 2030 –time to talk” and reformed its public service in order to achieve a whole of government approach.
But the challenges ahead cannot be underestimated and will hit us hard if we don’t use this current opportunity to work together.
Personally I don’t want to picture a future for Canberra that proves “climate doomsayers” and “peakers”, with their apocalyptic projections right. But I pretty much believe that in an age of high fossil fuel consumption there will be continued growth in forms of mobility, which are predominately fossil fuel based. I still believe that Canberra will find a transition to a post- oil economy on its own very difficult as long there is no real united response while we have still time.
Looking at the recent mortgage meltdown in theUS, increasing oil prices are invoking panic. This crisis also showed that within a short time period entire suburbs can collapse. These are usually located on the fringe, where public transport services are perceived as very inconvenient, access to social services, quality open spaces are outside of walking or cycling distance and households find it hard to pay off the mortgage.
Suburban sprawl has given us many advantages, based on cheap oil, but this honeymoon time has come to an end. The obesity epidemic is evident.
If we keep providing the existing rational of greenfield development that will consume valuable land and other natural resources it will seriously undermine the future resilience of Canberra, within or outside of our 10 km growth radius as indicated in the Canberra Plan.
Also Canberra has a higher car dependency than the national average and is about ten times less dense than Melbourne and Sydney. Under the bottom line the Australian capital is one of the lowest density cities in the world.
Also by distracting us from seeking just solutions to the issue of energy, water, waste and food production in favour of individualised approaches is not equitable.
Canberra as a city is a collective entity that needs to find common good solutions to avoid the risk of becoming highly exclusive for some members of its population.
I hope it is not in the interest of the greater community to support the fact that the amount of road infrastructure needed to be maintained has grown by almost 30 per cent since 1990.
International best practise exemplar shows that there are solutions which are working very well on different levels. For example Freiburg Vauban in Germany or Somerville in Western Australia show wonderful creations of communities that drive innovation and share social, economic and environmental goals on an equal basis.
Today I was walking through the bookshelves, a magazine titled Cities of Tomorrow – envisioning the future of urban habitat caught my eye and made me think.
Since cities exist as planners, architects and designers visioned urban aspirational strategies. Some of these visions are more and some less radical or scary. Internationally we can look back to a long history of vision starting with Georges Eugene Hausmann modernised Paris, Edgar Chambless Road towns approach in Baltimore to Washington, Le Courbusier’s proposal of the Radiant city based on CIAM principles, Richard Neutra with his Rush City and even the creation of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer with Brasilia as a planned city.
Hold on – then there is also the fine capital of Australia, namely Canberra, where Walter Burley Griffin designed this ideal city. A city for up to 75,000 people with grand boulevards to enhance high quality vistas and green spaces, a public transport system that enables convenient travel options through the city as well as a leasehold system that ensures equity in access to housing. As we all know. Canberra has not become an ideal city and is still emerging. Planning paradigms, political climate and community engagement has changed. Like all these realised visions around the globe,Canberra adopted contemporary ideas at the time and tried to adopt world’s best practice.
Since I arrived in the ACT I have got the feeling that the planning profession suffered significantly and is under criticism from all directions. I think this criticism it is not deserved. Compared to other countries Australia has a huge shortage of planners and this is reflected in the number of planners per capita. Through the creation of a political neo-liberal environment, the planning profession experienced a systematic de-skilling and has been terribly under resourced for many years. Some well-known examples included the National Capital Authority, which has had extensive funding cuts over the last decade and future is in question. ACTPLA will now emerge with a potential loss in responsibilities as part of the new sustainable development directory. How can one perform well under very constrained environments? You wouldn’t throw a single doctor into a hospital full of very ill patients, let him know that he has to treat and cure all of the people in it, and without the use of medicine, tools and infrastructure necessary to do so.
Urban and Regional planning is an exciting profession and, in my experience, appears to generate interest and discussion among a good cross-section of the community.
Most people agree on the vision for Canberra to be a vibrant, sustainable and healthy city that is a shining examplar in the 21st century.
Recently the University of Canberra in collaboration with ANU created a joint Centre for Urban and Regional Futures that offers a good selection planning courses. This is an ideal opportunity for the people of Canberra to follow this invitation to take up the fulfilling challenge, study Urban Planning and to make a difference.
Good skilled planners are able to harness this information and try to translate that into a reality that maximises opportunities for all members of the community. Let’s create master plans and a vision for Canberra that adequately reflects the community values, acknowledges the achievements of the past and builds on the professional expertise that good skilled planners bring on the table. After all, the built environment informs us of who we are, where we came from and where we are about to go in the future.
