Neighbourhoods

The City of Yarra has 21 Local Area Place Making (LAPM) areas, or neighbourhoods.

Local Area Place Making

Council improves the amenity of neighbourhoods by following the Local Area Place Making (LAPM) Policy, which grew out of the old Local Area Traffic Management (LATM) process. LAPM reviews involve analysis of local traffic flows and multiple stages of community consultation.

Problem

The main problem is that it takes Council 10-15 years to cycle through reviews of all 21 LAPMs, which is too slow to react to our pace of population growth.

The next problem is that each LAPM review is typically only allocated a budget of $300k-$400k (although LAPM 3 Scotchmer did received $1.9m). This is simply too little, severely limiting the scope of infrastructure investment to manage traffic, increase safety and improve streetscapes.

Improving the LAPM policy & process

Streets Alive Yarra suggests that the LAPM policy and process can be improved by:

• reviewing all 21 LAPMs in each 4-year term of Council,
• allocate each LAPM review an average budget of $2m, and
• using a citizens’ jury to work through how best to use our limited public space.

Our full submission is available as a PDF to download:

Upcoming LAPMs

The priority for upcoming LAPMs can be viewed on the City of Yarra website. The next to be reviewed are:

• East Clifton Hill,
• West Clifton Hill, and
• Highett.

Design suggestions

Streets Alive Yarra collates ideas and suggestions from residents and ratepayers for how LAPM neighbourhoods can be improved:

• North Carlton (LAPM 2)
• Scotchmer (LAPM 3)
• East Clifton Hill (LAPM 6)
• Abbotsford (LAPM 13)
• Bendigo (LAPM 19)
• Cremorne (LAPM 20 Balmain)
• Barkly (LAPM 21)

Contact us to be a champion

Do you have ideas how to improve the streets in your neighbourhood? We can publish your ideas so that they can be seen by your neighbours. We’re looking for a champion for each LAPM area – contact us to join our growing list of champions.