I attended the ICTC conference in Auckland and can't find your presentation on the ICTC website. I am Town Centre Manager of a suburban centre 8Km from the CBD. I'd like to quote your comments in the presentation on building communities around public spaces (we have four attractive landscaped public courtyards)rather than around roads and cars. Can you please e-mail me your presentation or notes? Hope you can help.

Have a look at the Australian Conservation Foundation report at http://acfonline.org.au/uploads/res_Atlas_Main_Findings.pdf
and the Consumption Atlas at http://www.acfonline.org.au/custom_atlas/index.html

It is a great report which investigates the habits of the people in our Australian cities. When you boil it down, the reason behind the high use of energy and water is related to individual income. Inner city areas in Australia have a much higher income per capita than the suburbs. With high income comes high disposible income. High disposible income results in more restaurant dinners, another pair of jeans, more trips abroad, a new couch, a larger house, etc, etc. Therefore the habits of the population need to be tackled if we in Australia are going to reduce our carbon footprint.

Cheers,
Adam (Sydney)

My guess is he meant by traveling to "the city," he means the CBD. When I lived in Sydney, that's what we called it.

Melbourne is an amazing city, and I thought tram service was quite good. With that said, I stayed in Carlton North I believe, which wasn't too far from the CBD.

Of all the cities in the world I've visited, Sydney and Melbourne are my favs for some reason. New York would fall in my top 5-10.

Melbourne also has fantastic Asian cuisine in its CBD.

Really great report. I can see that Melbourne has changed quite a bit since I was last there in 2002.

Are those trams any good inside the city?

The CBD is quite pleasant, but dear god...the train services are terrible. The train tracks spread out in all directions, so that to get to any place not on your train line, you have to travel to the city to change lines.

Also, how does 1 train per 20mins on my line sound?

George Haikalis
President
Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, Inc. (IRUM)

In terms of the concern for overcrowding, in the 1970s William H. Whyte’s Street Life Project (that Project for Public Spaces grew out of) explored this issue in great depth and found that:

“When a space begins to fill up, people don’t distribute themselves evenly over it; they go where the people are.”

and

“The places that carry the most people are the most efficient in the use of space as well as the most pleasant. It is people who determine the level of crowding and they do it very well.”

A couple examples of how PPS has tried to address the issue of overcrowding in NYC… We were brought in to study and make recommendations for Rockefeller Center in the 80s when they started having trouble with crowds and then in the last year to work in a similar way with Times Square. In both instances, while more sidewalk space was desperately needed and recommended, a big part of the answer, as well as the best strategy for getting more space, was actually creating more “places for people”, more comfortable, flexible, sitable destinations.

Rock Center had been and Times Square still is designed and managed to move people (and cars) through them and less as destinations. Creating a range of destinations that manage and define the pedestrian experience more positively for a broader cross-section of users, distributed it more widely in the district, was the strategy here.

The big opportunity in NYC is not just to make these major destinations work, but as you guys and Jan Gehl point out is to widen sidewalks. And this can perhaps best be accomplished if we start to evaluate, plan and manage our streets not just corridors for mobility, but as places for people.

Andrew,

It definitely appeared that Australian cities have made all of the great mistakes that we have in terms of their ecological impact. However, I was struck by how open to being self critical people were. Everyone I met as well as national media seemed to be very comfortable talking about issues of “Carbon Footprint”, global climate change and even placemaking. My general sense was that while they may have made many of the same mistakes as us they were much more open to and motivated to change… and are quickly going to leave us in the dust!

Why this is so, is still a mystery to me, and I don't even know if New York has the same relationship with its suburbs (in terms of energy usage). Regardless, it is something that we do not want to emulate.

However, New York's public spaces are in dire need of attention. Penn Station and the surrounding area is hostile to the elderly and handicapped, foreboding to new visitors, and doesn't feel remotely like a civic space for the public. Same goes for 125th St, Times Sq, Herald Sq, Houston St, much of Coney Island, Queensboro Plaza, and of course Atlantic Yards -- just to name a few.

New York has some great public places -- Central Park, Washington Sq Park, St Mark's Place, Park Slope -- but they tend to be parks or upper-middle class neighborhoods.