The Grattan Institute yesterday released its insightful report Social Cities. We’ve selected a few extracts and ask readers to contemplate what can be done and how well our councillors and planners are moving in this direction – if at all? The full report is available from: http://www.grattan.edu.au/publications/137_report_social_cities.pdf

“…quality of open space is just as important as the quantity. A small park that is well maintained and watered, with established trees to provide shade, vibrant flower gardens for visual pleasure, quality seating and creative playgrounds, will be used far more actively than a park that is far larger but less inviting. In fact without appropriate design, parks can be too big for comfort. In his pioneering work William H Whyte demonstrated that people prefer to congregate on the edges of public spaces (see Figure 18). So if seating and play equipment are stranded in the middle of large open areas they will not get much use, because people will feel exposed and vulnerable. This is particularly true when a park is bounded by busy roads, blank walls and fences or vacant and derelict land.

Some of the most successful parks are intimate mini-parks or ‘pocket parks’. Pocket parks are often created on irregular-shaped patches of land that are too small for building, or on vacant lots between other developments. Sometimes the developers of major projects are required to include pocket parks as part of their planning approval. In response to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the City of Los Angeles is transforming foreclosed properties into pocket parks with the aim of adding amenity and raising the value of surrounding houses and neighbourhoods at the same time.

In the 1980s in the UK, Northamptonshire planner Alan Teulon pioneered the idea of pocket parks by involving local residents in identifying, creating and maintaining small, local parks. This evolved into the Doorstep Greens program that, for a small investment, has transformed more than 100 neglected public areas into popular green spaces. Strong public engagement and volunteering has helped to keep costs and vandalism down. The process of developing these pocket parks has brought local residents together and helped to foster social connection.(p.23)

Traffic

In his pioneering work on streets, Donald Appleyard showed that residents in a street with light traffic flow (2,000 vehicles per day) had three times more friends living in the street (and twice as many acquaintances) than residents on a street with heavy traffic flow (16,000 vehicles per day).

The heavily trafficked street had little or no sidewalk activity while on the street with light traffic, front steps were frequently used for sitting and chatting, and there was play and casual conversation on the pavement.

More recent studies confirm the impact that traffic has on the time people spend on the street. In New York, 44% of people who live on streets with heavy traffic say they respond by going out less often. This compares to only 7% of people who live in medium traffic areas, and 3% of people in light traffic areas. (p.36-7)

There are many ways to shift the role of streets from the car dominated default. The first and most obvious is to reduce speed limits in residential streets. In recent years the default speed limit in built-up areas in many Australian cities has been reduced from 60 to 50km/h. Road safety experts say Australia should follow the Swedish example and further reduce residential speed limits to 30km/h, a speed below which pedestrians have dramatically improved chances of surviving the impact of being hit by a car.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, a significant reduction in speed limits is predicted to have only a minor impact on average travel times (p.38)