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The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
As we look forward to council considering the draft Place Making Framework tomorrow night, take a step back and remember the seminal 1980 book and film ‘The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces’. A street is the river of life of the city, we come to these places not to escape from it, but to…
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LAPM policy axed
The Local Area Place Making (LAPM) policy is proposed to be axed, and replaced with a Road Safety Study Policy and a Place Making Framework. We’ve reviewed both draft policies, and think they need to be amended before being adopted, to correct glaring deficiencies. Feedback on the draft Road Safety Study Policy Feedback on the…
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Main Street design guide
Village Well, a placemaking consultancy based in Melbourne, has published a design guide for main streets. The guide highlights what makes a great main street, including activity, accessibility, and inclusiveness: The guide points out that main streets should be designed for people, provide reasons to visit and stay, and support traders to curate the street:…
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Urban design guidelines
The Victorian state government published urban design guidelines in 2017, to: support state agencies, local government and the urban development sector to deliver, functional and enjoyable places for people to live, work, and spend leisure time. The guidelines aim to create neighbourhoods that foster community interaction and make it easy for people of all ages…
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Great public spaces
The NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment has published a Great Public Spaces Guide and associated evaluation tool. The guide points out that public spaces include streets, which should be accessible and enjoyable by all. Also, that great streets create better places to live, with positive social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes. The guide…
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Socialists win Paris, Greens win other cities
Socialist Mayor of Paris, Anne Hildago, has won another 6-year term of office, promising to deliver 15-minute neighbourhoods, improve walking and cycling, and to remove on-street parking. Under her plans Paris will remove 72% of its on-street car parking spaces. According to a 2019 study by Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (Apur) there are 83,500 on-street parking…
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Transforming public spaces
Cities all around the world are transforming their public spaces. Urb-i has been mapping these changes, with before/after images. They offer a map of all their sites: There are several sites in the City of Yarra: Including the pocket park on Richmond Terrace: This shows that cities can and do improve. We can build a…
