A new tool that will help improve the quality and useability of our public spaces and city buildings launched last week at the fifth annual State of Australian Cities Conference, held at the University of Melbourne.
A plain-English ‘how-to’ guide and check list known as Creating Places for People – an urban design protocol for Australian cities, will help guide decision makers and professionals whose work affects the built environment, as well as members of the public who care about the design of their local community.
This document, along with the www.urbandesign.gov.au site, is designed to help produce the attractive, high-quality sustainable places in which people will want to live, work and relax.
It sets out the common sense principles which underpin good urban design and provides sound, practical advice for avoiding the planning mistakes which too often create neighbourhoods characterised by high crime rates, poor health outcomes, social isolation, joblessness, poor housing and a lack of basic services.
Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP – who launched the guide – said in a statement: “We should not have to put up with badly-designed, unimaginative urban areas that do not serve their communities.
“But building places where vibrant communities can grow and prosper is about more than providing Australians with a better quality of life. There’s also an economic imperative.
“Indeed as one of the most urbanised nations on the planet, Australia’s continuing prosperity in the globalised world of the 21st century will largely depend on how successful we are at making our cities work better.”
Creating Places for People builds on earlier urban policy initiatives:
- Establishment of the Major Cities Unit.
- A commitment of $7.3 billion to modernise and extend the urban rail infrastructure in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney as well as on the Gold Coast – more than all our predecessors since Federation combined.
- Putting infrastructure planning reform on the COAG agenda with the establishment of the National Planning Taskforce.
- Requiring all state and territory governments to have strategic planning systems in place for their capital city by January 2012 as a condition of further Federal infrastructure funding.
- Publishing a regular State of the Cities Report to monitor the performance of our eighteen biggest cities over time so policy-makers can measure and assess what works and what doesn’t.
Creating Places for People is the culmination of two years of work by the Major Cities Unit within the Department of Infrastructure and Transport in collaboration with stakeholders, academics and officials from all levels of government. All up, more than 500 individuals and organisations had a say in its development.
A full copy of the document can be downloaded from: www.urbandesign.gov.au.
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