The prioritisation of car parking in our busy town centres and along our cities’ high streets increases traffic, pollution and noise and discourages people from staying in an area to socialise and create a sense of community. To make matters worse, the increasing tendency of local councils to not install seating or shade along high streets (or worse to install hostile architecture) further discourages the use of our streets for anything but the most utilitarian uses. This is as true for Sydney as any major Australian city. For a country that is known to love being outdoors and with a climate that is conducive to lingering outside, we’ve created an urban environment that discourages people from sitting outside and enjoying the streets. As Committee for Sydney says in its excellent Reclaiming Sydney’s High Streets report: Most of Sydney’s streets, including its main shopping streets, lack places to sit. It’s a sign of a great street when it invites people to stop, rest, and check out the urban scenery. This, along with shade and shelter, is a key element in enticing people to stay on a street rather than just walk through. We shouldn’t have to go to a café every time we want to sit down. Above: Hostile architecture in Dulwich Hill (left) and Marrickville (right), Sydney. Source: Author At Better Streets we want the community to be able to use and enjoy safe, attractive, shaded, comfortable streets for recreation, socialisation, safe transport, community events, and more! And a critical point of public space is it should be for everyone and not cost money to use. At the same time, studies have shown that people walking or riding a bicycle spend more money in local retailers than people arriving by car and improved walking and cycling amenities can increase retail spend by up to 30%. It’s well established that when you design streets for people, you get all the things that come along with that: community, leisure, connection, recreation, commerce and celebration. One way to address our car-dominated city high streets is to advocate for car parking spaces or entire carparks to be given over to community use through conversion to ‘town squares’, parks or parklets in place of kerbside parking for public use or cafe use. Above: Good Design Projects, Parklet commissioned by Randwick Council (left), and Foursquare, Summer Hill Piazza (right) But how to do this? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but here are some things to think about:
In some cases, the best way to change the way a street works will be to test interventions through temporary pilot projects. This was famously how New York City began the process of pedestrianising Times Square: the first move was temporary planters and a coat of paint. Cities all over the world have converted single parking spaces at the side of the road called “parklets” - small art installations, mini parks, and café seating that occupy parking spaces next to the kerb. Bike lanes, bus lanes, footpath widenings, and many other changes can be trialled on a temporary basis. Lessons from the trial can then be converted into permanent changes. Marrickville Town Square Sydneysiders love the rich multicultural heritage, offbeat underground arts scene and fabulous food offerings of Marrickville, an inner city suburb around 5 km from the Sydney Central Business District. But if you’ve ever walked down traffic-filled Illawarra Road on a hot day to buy groceries, queued for a banh mi, or played chess at Café Nho, you’ll probably agree – it would be so nice to have a shady place to sit down, for people to come together, socialise, chat, eat their banh mi without having to resort to hovering next to the carpark or sitting in the back of their vans (see below!). Above: Locals trying to eat their lunch in the only available bit of public space on Illawarra Rd - the back of their van in the Calvert St carpark. Source: Dan Conway. Currently there are very few central places to gather in Marrickville, in the style of the Piazza in Summer Hill or the new Parramatta Square, and also very little seating or shade along the major high streets. Above: Plenty of street parking on Illawarra Road, Marrickville, but nowhere for people to sit down. For this reason, a group of local residents have started a petition to the Inner West council for the conversion of the Calvert St carpark into a town square. The group has also:
But the goal of the campaign is a permanent reclaiming of that space from cars, for community use. The space could be used for food markets, outdoor music, chess, table tennis, screenings of football matches, and any number of community events. Therefore the campaign is ramping up support for the petition currently, to demonstrate the extent of the support for such a change in the community. Above: Artist's Impression of the proposed Marrickville Town Square The campaign’s experience has been that most local residents are desperate for a public space and the proposition makes total sense to people intuitively. Some choice quotes from petition signatories include:
The biggest barriers are those in the small business representatives who are very concerned about loss of parking. The campaign has worked to reassure residents that there will still be back street parking and direct them to parking areas they may not know about, while emphasising the need to improve public transport, widen footpaths, and generally improve public amenity so residents don’t feel compelled to drive to their local shops.
We encourage you to sign the petition for Marrickville Town Square here: https://www.change.org/p/we-want-marrickville-town-square For more information:
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Better Streets welcomes the Transport for NSW Implementation review of the TfNSW Road User Space Allocation policy. In January 2021, when the Road User Space Allocation (RUSA) policy was released, it marked a monumental step in the organisation’s growth in strategic planning. The two-page policy was short, but achieved its purpose in allowing the organisation to have real conversations about Road Space Allocation. The principles of the policy are:
The review found, there have been enormous challenges with actually implementing the policy or holding anyone accountable and seeing changes in projects provisioning for more space for people walking, riding to improve sustainable transport options on our roads. Some of the findings were:
Better Streets encourages Transport for NSW to adopt these recommendations as soon as possible and ensure the transition process is adequately funded and well resourced. This is a massive change management exercise that will require a strong team and committed leadership. We can’t afford to build more road space for private motor vehicle use if we want to live in healthy, sustainable, liveable places. Stronger policies like this RUSA policy (with measurable targets) are required to ensure we build safer, more enjoyable places for people to walk and ride a bicycle, and operate businesses. The recent decision to build a pedestrian bridge over Dobroyd Parade, better known as the CityWest Link (CWL), at the intersection with Waratah Street in Haberfield, is a continuation of the dismantling of an environment conducive to walking and riding, and replacing it with one that is hostile and discouraging where it is most prevalent [1]. While Transport for NSW (TfNSW) claims the bridge prioritises a “safer crossing for pedestrians”, there is a question as to whose interests it really serves. Presently the intersection supports motor vehicles travelling into and out of Haberfield using the CWL. The pedestrian crossing at the Waratah Street intersection is a critical connection to Timbrell Park for Haberfield and North Ashfield residents. Timbrell Park is an extensive and popular recreational area supporting a flagship Livvi’s Place Playground and Cafe (designed based on Inclusive Play principles) [3], running, cycling and BMX tracks, numerous sporting fields and a focal point for active and passive recreation such as dog walking and yoga/ pilates. The final bridge design will provide access via stairs and a lift at each end. There will be no ramps, requiring all those who cannot negotiate two sets of stairs to rely on a lift that may or may not be functioning. While traffic lights will remain to govern the flow of cars, ground access to the crossing will be denied to people walking and riding, with their way to be blocked with fences and concrete barriers. Community engagement with the proposal reflected concern at the extent to which the removal of the at-grade crossing would discourage and exclude people who wanted to walk, ride or roll to the park. There is a body of research supporting this concern. Solioz and Lopez [4] have noted: If a [pedestrian bridge] is not universally accessible, convenient and well-utilized by a diversity of active travelers, then it might be better described as a disabling apparatus, a monument of immobility or an anti-pedestrian bridge. The Inner West Council initially argued for the crossing to be retained at-grade with a single phase, while the Haberfield Association found that TfNSW had no interest in remedying its own experience of unsafe driving behaviour. Despite abundant traffic cameras, they are only for flow management rather than enforcement of dangerous driving. It became apparent that giving over the space entirely to cars was more the priority. [5] In this way the community itself arrived at the conclusions of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) [6], …by displacing people, pedestrian bridges simply reinforce the dominion of vehicles over people on the streets. Pedestrian bridges discourage walking and cycling and exacerbate poor road safety for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. Separating people from the street reinforces the prioritization of personal motor vehicles, while encouraging speeding, driver negligence, and traffic fatalities. The millions of dollars that this bridge, (estimated cost $9 million [6]) will cost could be better used to build better connections for people walking and riding bicycles in the neighbourhood. [1] WalkSydney, 2024. WalkSydney’s submission to the current Parliamentary Inquiry into the Impact of the Rozelle Interchange
[2] For more information on Livvi’s Place playgrounds see https://www.touchedbyolivia.com.au/ [3] Soliz, Aryana & Pérez López, Ruth. (2022). ‘Footbridges’: pedestrian infrastructure or urban barrier? [4] The Haberfield Association. (2023). https://haberfield.asn.au/cwl-waratah-st-bridge-habas-submission/ [5] Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (2024): "Pedestrian Bridges make cities less walkable why do cities keep building them?" [6] Compared to the (shorter) Heathcote pedestrian bridge at Princes Highway which is reported to have cost $5.5 million in 2014, an estimated cost for the Haberfield bridge (+32% as per the relevant ABS cost index and an additional margin to account for the longer bridge) is around $9 million. Town Team Movement, in partnership with the Western Australia State Government, Main Roads Western Australia and the Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA), have launched the new Streets Alive program. The program provides $5 million over 5 years for capacity building and support for eligible community organisations and local governments for projects designed to calm traffic on local roads in urban areas across Western Australia.
If you're in Western Australia, you can register your Project Idea now! The first step offers potential ‘seed’ grants of up to $5,000 incl. GST in all towns and neighbourhoods across WA for eligible community groups. The project ideas can include traffic calming initiatives and community-led activations, such as: road murals, active transport infrastructure, street furniture, parklets, planter boxes, community gardens, street art, pop-up libraries and street parties. Future funding rounds will assist larger projects. Find out more by clicking here. |
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