Designing a Park for the Sydney Baby Boom

Greetings from the Annandale Neighbourhood Park Consultation. This is being held in a disused carpet warehouse in the suburb of Annadale, in the inner west of Sydney. Leichhardt Council has acquired a small parcel of land on the corner of Taylor and Chester Streets, next to an existing small park. The idea is to extend the park along Johnston Creek. Two designs (Concept Plan 1 and Concept Plan 2) by architects Phillips Marler were presented (they designed the nearby Leichhardt Living Street). In attendcne are several Councillors, including Daniel Kogoy. 

One plan has a part along the creek, which could later be extended. It is proposed to demolish the old carpet warehouse, but retain the concrete slab to support the rubber surface for playground equipment. This will also seal in any contamination which may be under the concrete from previous industry activity.

Both designs look good. My suggestion would be to incorporate a small wetland which would treat water from Johnston Creek, use some on site and return the rest to the creek. Lessons learned from Whites Creek Wetland would allow this to be done at lower cost with less maintenance required.

Apart from parks, other community facilities will be needed for the baby boom and the council should start planning now. One way to provide better facilities at lower cost is ton combine functions and collocate services. The ACT Government provides public libraries collocated at several schools, with the school and public libraries combined in the one building. The latest of these at the Gungahlin satellite town centre, combines a library for the high school, the public, TAFE classrooms and community rooms. Some libraries have government shop-fronts. This is easier in the ACT, where there is no separation between state and local government, but is not impossible in NSW and would provide large savings and better service.

The consultation process itself was interesting, being held in the old carpet warehouse. Leichhardt Council seems to be able to choose interesting locations for their community meetings, the last I attended was in a meeting hall of a former mental asylum. Proposed plans were displayed on and a video projected on the wall. One improvement would have been to record a video presentation and make it available on the council web site, for those who could not attend in person (along with a document).

Such face-to-face consultations are a very expensive process and only a very small fraction of residents can and do attend. It may be much cheaper and more equitable to conduct the consultation purely on-line.

Currently a Park Survey Form is provided, but this is a PDF form which is not very user-friendly and the on-line experience misses out on much of the face-to-face involvement. The form is a 783kbyte download and it appears that it has to be printed out and then scanned in to send back.

Ian Warden on Marion Mahony Griffin and Australian Flora

Canberra writer, Ian Warden, will give a free talk on "Tiptoe through the Telopeas: Why Marion Mahony Griffin would have boycotted Floriade", 31 January 2013 at the Australian Botanical Gardens in Canberra. This is part of the Canberra Centenary.

Living Street in Sydney

On Saturday I attended the opening of the "Living Street" in Taylor Street, Annandale, Sydney. This is a project by the Leichhardt Council to green the street and slow the traffic, while retaining parking. The real thing looks remarkably like the artist's rendering in the council's plans. The Chester Street end of the road had already been blocked to through traffic, in a previous project, with installed a playground across a bend in the road. To this the living street project added gardens built out from the footpath, up to Booth Street. These have a intermittent concrete curb on the uphill side and a solid curb n the downhill side to to collect runoff. One section of the street has a garden built out, with bridges for pedestrian access. All the work looks robust. One of the principle ways this will make the street livable is by discouraging through traffic.

The implementation is not perfect. Some of the newly installed drains are too high, so that runoff will over-top the concrete curbs and flow down the road, or onto the foot path. In other places the drains are too low, so that water will run straight down the drain, without time to be absorbed into the swale. The low outlet problem could be fixed by placing sandbags around them, which would filter the water (also preventing leaf litter being into the drains, blocking them).

Leichhardt Council has received a grant of $250,000 to create a Living Street within the LGA .The vision is ‘to create and implement a model for sustainable living within an urban street context focusing on infrastructure changes and environmental education.’

Taylor Street has been selected as the Leichhardt Living Streets pilot project.

The project objectives will be to:-

• create a sustainable environment in the Leichhardt Living Street
• improve the sustainability of households living in the street
• Improve actions and behaviours across a range of environmental issues
• Improve social outcomes for residents

What is a Living Street ?

It is a place where a street is returned as a community asset to be shared by pedestrians, playing children, cyclists and low-speed motor vehicles.

The goal of the Living Streets project in Taylor Street is to make progress in two areas of sustainability by adopting an wholistic approach.

The two areas of sustainability are:

• Improvement of street infrastructure
• Development of community awareness through environmental education.

Broadly, the project will develop what American environmental writer, Robert Gottlieb describes as an ‘Urban Nature Agenda. A pocket park or community garden in one neighborhood can form Ropart of a process of reclaiming urban land otherwise abandoned or degraded’. (Gottlieb 2008)

Living Streets - vital biodiversity Existing and potential tree canopies can form flora and fauna corridors that contribute to urban nature and provide opportunities for the detention and reuse of stormwater. In this way, a street can contribute to urban nature and help mitigate urban air, noise pollution and the consequences of excessive heat. ...

From: What is a living street?, Leichhardt Council, 2009