Tag Archives: planned city

Share the space

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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.

b)     What is a shared space? www.dtf.gov.uk/publications/ltn-01-11

What is the Urban Design Protocol? www.urbandesign.gov.au

What are the benefits of making streets more walking and cycling friendly? www.heartfoundation.org.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/GoodforBusinessFINAL_Nov.pdf

What do most stakeholders in the ACT think about creating better places for people? www.healthyplaces.org.au/userfiles/file/News/act_activelivingreport.pdf

What has the ACT Government committed to do in relation to walking and cycling? www.transport.act.gov.au

What has the ACT Government already done?  For a start it signed on 1 November 2010 the International Charter for Walking. www.walk21.com/papers/international520Charter%20for%20Walking.pdf

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.

Be an urbanist and share the space!

Canberra on the way to become a more resilient city?

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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.

ACT Government website www.measuringourpgrogess.com.au shows that contact outside of households is declining.

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.

Decision makers we count on you!

Visions for Canberra

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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.

Let’s hope we are heading in the right direction!