Prioritising Healthy Placemaking after Covid-19 Workshop Outcomes & Practitioner Insights

This on-line event is organised in association with the South West Local Health District, Western Sydney Health Alliance, and Healthy Urban Environments Collaboratory. What have we have learnt from living through COVID19 and how do we build back better? How do we deliver placemaking that incorporates the explicit recognition of the need for social, environmental and economic sustainability and puts healthy placemaking at the top of everyone’s priorities

Despicable Urban Places: Hot Car Parks

Cities are warmer than surrounding non-urban areas. Climate models predict that metropolitan centres will become even warmer due to the dual impacts of global warming and densification. However, the outer fringe zones of metropolitan centres will also become warmer as a consequence of urban expansion that requires replacing green and open spaces like pastures or bushland with grey infrastructure such as roads and buildings. Limiting the warming effect of urban expansion is possible. It requires dedicated heat-responsive planning and design strategies being applied systematically and at scale. But where should planners and developers start to effectively reduce urban heat? At-grade car parks are an ideal starting point. They represent the ‘low-hanging fruit’ for urban cooling efforts. While unavoidable today and in the near future, at-grade car parks are predominately unshaded; made from black, heat-retaining asphalt; widespread and fairly uniform; and often large in size. Changes to current designs of at-grade car parks can therefore have a big impact. A number of strategies to effectively reduce surface heat of car parks are commercially available. Cooling car parks not only addresses their status as local heat islands, but it also leads to lower ambient air temperatures in downwind environments. This report documents:   Microclimates across eight car parks and reference sites covered by vegetation. Measurements of surface and air temperatures related to a range of car park surface materials. The cooling effect of shade in car parks. Current design guidelines and policies in Australia related to car parks. Alternative design solutions for cooler car parks. The empirical data and policy analysis are used to develop a set of recommendations for urban heat mitigation that can be applied to new and existing car parks. Because of the common nature of at-grade car parks around the world, the proposed cooling techniques can be applied globally, irrespective of the fact that the underlying case studies and data originated from Sydney

Planning Cultural Infrastructure for the City of Parramatta: A Research Report

Parramatta is dramatically changing, cultural practices are shifting, and the demands on cultural infrastructure are becoming increasingly complex. This report provides the necessary research and information to assist the City of Parramatta in determining its strategic priorities regarding the development of cultural infrastructure in the City. There are three components of the report - Audit, Benchmarking, and Needs Analysis. Part 1 of this report provides an audit of Parramatta’s cultural infrastructure, its patronage and future needs and trends. It provides a realistic assessment of the gaps in existing cultural infrastructure and facilities in Parramatta and of how the cultural needs of its current and future populations are met. Part 2 of this report provides key data regarding a selection of relevant national and international cities for comparison with Parramatta. Part 3 of this report describes the specific short-term and medium-term needs for investment and planning required to bring Parramatta’s cultural infrastructure profile to that of world-class regional cultural capital

Does strategic planning provide the clarity it claims? : framing land-use conflict as competing interpretations of the same planning concept : the case of the 'mixed-use neighbourhood'

A key component of urban governance is participatory strategic planning. Among other purposes, it is intended to establish consensus and clarity around future development patterns. This, it follows, reduces conflict during subsequent development assessments. Using textual analysis techniques, this research unpacks the planning concept of the mixed-use neighbourhood, as used in Sydney’s planning strategies. On one hand, objectives of ‘jobs closer to home’ and ‘amenities in walking distance’ create a sense of the neighbourhood being self-contained. On the other hand, objectives of ‘building on hubs of a public transport network’ and ‘productivity gains through mobility and connection’ create a sense of the neighbourhood being well-connected. Using stakeholder interviews, the research highlights how planning conflicts in mixed-use neighbourhoods – the case of Kings Cross is examined – are often over these different interpretations. Contentious developments are those seen to prioritise either local amenity (of the self-contained neighbourhood) or metro-wide economic growth (through the well-connected neighbourhood) at the expense of the other. The findings highlight a possible limitation of strategic planning providing clarity for the community. In turn, it highlights the folly of expecting engagement during strategic planning to be an alternative to engagement during development approval

Concentration vs. dispersal of a late-night economy

In Sydney, Australia, the emergence of a late-night economy (LNE) has been a response to its role as a global financial centre, a world city, and a tourist destination. The City of Sydney Council considers itself at the vanguard of promoting and managing a vibrant, diverse, and sustainable LNE. The council works to improve business diversity, encourage growth in commercial centres that can accommodate it, and cap growth in centres that are thought to have reached capacity. However, it is difficult to inform future policy directions through the experiences of other areas of Sydney or even other Australian cities as there is no detailed evidence on which to base policies, nor is there a uniform ‘best practice’ in current policy directions. This is a significant problem for the city, one that will become increasingly important for other Australian cities and international locales as their LNEs also expand. This paper aims to improve the understanding of the merits of clustered and dispersed LNEs. The discussion is expanded by a brief examination of evidence from other world cities outlined through a review of existing literature which focuses on the current socio-cultural, economic, and political concerns that surround a LNE. The project’s scholarly significance lies primarily in its triangulation of three fields of literature: the extensive economic literature about developing industry clusters to promote growth and innovation, the growing role of the LNE in the broader economic growth of the city, and the social and environmental impacts of the LNE, particularly the role of business clustering in generating social and environmental impacts

Negotiating strategic planning's transitional spaces : the case of 'guerrilla governance' in infrastructure planning

Strategic planning can begin as a deliberative and inclusive process of plan making, but then transition into a decisive and exclusive process of investment and priority setting at the stage of implementation. Citizens who once participated in the formal plan making process through government-designed engagement events fade into the background in this critical latter part of strategic planning. At this point they must invent avenues to influence investment priorities. In the context of bicycle infrastructure planning and delivery in Sydney, Australia this paper examines how strategic plans that embrace cycling as an important transport mode translate into decisions to commit to some projects over others. The paper explores four ways community groups seek traction in a highly contentious and transitional space of planning through a process we call ‘guerrilla governance’. Evoking aspects of advocacy and insurgent planning, guerrilla governance broadens how the term ‘governance’ is used within urban planning scholarship, by incorporating such ‘legitimised’ agitation from beyond government

Home Modifications in Strata Properties

Some residents have experienced difficulties undertaking alterations in strata schemes to improve access and useability, called ‘home modifications’, in the Leichhardt Council area. This issue was identified by Leichhardt Council through discussions with local residents. This is a particular concern for older residents and residents with a disability. This issue was also recently raised in NSW Fair Trading’s discussion paper regarding the current legislative review of strata schemes. A report about the online consultation that informed the discussion paper states that “several people wrote of the difficulties they had experienced when trying to improve facilities for disabled people in their strata scheme.” The issue has also received some media coverage in different jurisdictions around Australia. In order to respond to this problem, Leichhardt Council engaged the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW to examine the accessibility needs and challenges of people living in strata-titled properties in the Leichhardt Council area

Thinking as testing the limits of friendship: on the Voegelin-Schütz correspondence

The exchange of letters between Eric Voegelin and Alfred Schütz took place in between 1938, or the year in which both were forced to leave Vienna due to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, and 1959, when Schütz passed away. Several of the more important letters were published previously in various contexts, and the project of publishing them all goes back to the 1970s. The entire correspondence, in the original German, only appeared in 2004. This book is a comprehensive selection and English translation of that volume. The book provides fascinating insights into the lives, times, works, and ideas of two master thinkers – though mostly to those who are already reasonably familiar with them. While the editors rightly state in their Introduction (the English version is a slightly modified translation of the German text) that it was not the place for a comprehensive reassessment of the work in light of this correspondence (p.5), more background details for a volume like this would have been helpful. However, the size of the book, both in English (261 pp.) and especially in German (579 pp.), might explain the limited space left for the ‘Editor’s Introduction’ (5 pages of text, followed by 2 full pages of notes). The most interesting part of the correspondence, without any doubt, are the often quite long letters that touch upon the heart of the work of the two thinkers, sparked by Voegelin’s first comments on reading Husserl’s Crisis. As both of them considered the other a privileged interlocutor, the ideas expressed have particular significance for the thinking of each. The exchange of letters is revealing not only concerning the substance of their disagreement, but also the manner in which this was addressed and handled. Here a central issue is played by the question of friendship

Western Sydney's urban transformation : examining the governance arrangements driving forward the growth vision

After decades of political wrangling,Sydney’s second airport at Badgerys Creek has now been backed by federal government commitment through the creation of the Western Sydney City Deal. One of the first actions has been to establish the Western Sydney Planning Partnership, which brings together the different local councils across western Sydney, the NSW Government, state-owned statutory agencies, and the Greater Sydney Commission, in consultation with the Australian Government. Its sole purpose is to accelerate Western Sydney’s broader urban transformation. Drawing on collaborative governance theory, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the workings of the partnership arrangement and consider the lessons it offers for Australian metropolitan governance. Leadership, institutional design, power and resource imbalances, prior history of governance conflict, trust building, and shared understanding, all influence the ability to translate vision into reality and determine whether the urban transformation is deliverable