Design Institute of Australia Conference in October, 2009. Speaker Professor Rob Adams
I recently attended a conference in October 2009 held by the Design Institute of Australia. Rob Adams was speaking. Following are some points I happened to take.
Speaker: Professor Rob Adams, Director of City Design for the City of Melbourne
- Climate change cannot happen without transforming cities
- 1000 houses on the fringe costs 300 mil more than 1000 within existing infrastructure. We need to “re-program” the existing.
containing our future development and infrastructure within our current city boundaries while achieving greater efficiencies and affordability is every Australian city’s aspiration. Achieving this has to date eluded us and will in the future become the litmus test of our commitment to succeed in the race for sustainability.
- Adam’s has been integral in the transformation of Melbourne into a 24 hour, livable city.
- Redevelopment is slow. To get Melbourne to where it is now took 25 years. Politicians aren’t conducive to slow progress. We have to stage development to appeal to political periods of power. Shows that progress is being made.
- The street is the city. We need to give the street back to the pedestrian and take it back from the automobile. Pedestrian paths need to be widened, other forms of transport are to be accomodated such as bus, bike, tram.
- In Melbourne dwellings to need to be moved to the city. Postcode 3000 planning policy. This is hard though, as the perception of “dwelling” needs to be altered among many.
- Though suburban areas are to be preserved. A massive part of Australian culture and can be used for catchment, re-vegetation, solar collection. Some interesting ideas relating to decentralisation of utility services such as power and water.
‘Power generation at its peak could have been better secured and off set by distributed solar power generation fed into the grid from the suburban roofs’
- Another phase of Melbourne’s future development is by enhancing its transport corridors. They account for 6% city’s ?population?.
If this current strategy were to be expanded by connecting all activity centres with a network of high-density corridors along all the existing and proposed public transport routes, we would have a far greater likelihood of success. This success would be further ensured if planning controls were amended along these routes to provide as-of-right development to a height of between four and eight storeys and to the depth of one site (or fifty metres). Heritage buildings and public parks would be protected. With limited car access, the road space would be calmed in favour of public transport, bicycles and pedestrians. If the increased value of these properties was partially captured and used to provide affordable housing, then this approach would deliver a web of high-density, mixed-use corridors linking activity centres. This web would be supported by a quality public transport system within easy walking distance of the adjacent suburban areas. The need to own a car would therefore be limited.
- No sloping car parks. Sloping car parks are hard to reprogram in the future.
- Concluding remarks
Australia requires a big shift in the way it visualises its cities and infrastructure. We need to break the myth that higher densities mean high rise development. More importantly, we need to quantify all the hidden costs (external costs and underpriced infrastructure) of continuing to build at low density on the periphery of our cities, and reinvest these hidden costs in making higher density Urban Corridors viable
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