Gil Penalosa in his podcast series “A Walk in the Park with Gil” speaks with Rob Adams, City Architect, of Melbourne, Australia.
In 1985 Melbourne was in decline as its population relocated to the suburbs with their suburban shopping centres and predominantly visited the CBD for work, commuting in the main by car. The 1985 Strategy Plan sought to reverse this trend and one of its initiatives was to make it more attractive in the future to use public transport, bicycles and walking.
The incremental change was to remove areas of asphalt from the city and replace them with wider footpaths, street trees, bike lanes and open spaces.
36 years on the city has repurposed over 80 hectares of asphalt and underperforming infrastructure for these purposes and in the process has brought back many thousands of new residents and transformed the downtown into one of the World’s Most Liveable City.
Time: September 7, 2021
Time: 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
You can register for this webinar here.
I do love Melbourne. That my kid lives there merely served as my introduction to the city. It’s much like Vancouver, with a very walkable CBD, and significant public transport. But MEL seems to have a better transit network, due in part to the use of surface trams.