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It seems that nobody is happy about Fishermans Bend.

My first impression was that the design guidelines were quite good, but the public response has been scathing since the Strategic Framework Plan was released in late July. The usual old chestnuts of building height and transport provision dominate mainstream coverage of Australia’s biggest urban renewal project, just like they do whenever somebody tries to build above two storeys in suburbia. Occasionally a spectacular oversight breaks the monotony, in the worst way possible.

Still, the most interesting criticism I've heard so far is that this 'might be another Docklands'.

I suspect that the reason the response has been so generic and negative is that there isn't much to set Fishermans Bend apart in people's minds. Without anything distinct to latch on to, discussion naturally turns to standard worries about urban canyons and traffic jams.

This is a concern, because place identity matters. Rapid development without a clear identity is part of the reason Docklands sometimes still feels like a collection of towers, rather than a place.

I believe that the urban design standards advocated in the Strategic Framework Plan should give us a better built form than than in Docklands, if they're adhered to. But in terms of making Fishermans Bend unique and memorable, I think there's a big opportunity that is yet to be taken.

Instead of being remembered as Australia's biggest urban renewal project, Fishermans bend could become Australia's leafiest, lushest, and most sustainable suburb.

On an average year, 1.6 billion litres of rain will fall on Fishermans Bend. The drain at the end of every shower, and every tap, is a pretty steady source of water too. With 80,000 future residents taking showers each day, this greywater is a huge resource stream. It could be cleaned, and recycled, using natural systems of filtration through plants – while greening up the plants in buildings and open spaces.

Water Sensitive Urban Design isn’t a new idea, but this is a chance to do it at a vast scale, and reap accordingly vast benefits. Next time you're in Singapore, set aside a few hours to visit the Gardens by the Bay precinct to see how good this can look - if you can make your way through the crowds.

The greening driven by all this available water could be vertical, too. With good design, many of the new, tall buildings in Fishermans Bend could be covered in plants – like they’ve done at One Central Sydney, an apartment development blanketed in vertical gardens that not only looks fantastic, but also sold hundreds of apartments prior to construction. This aesthetic could be a nice counterpoint to the stark glass and steel of Docklands.

Rooftop greening doesn’t need to just be about beauty: it can also mean local production of food. Rooftop greenhouses, like they’ve got in Montreal and Brooklyn, operate at commercial scale and produce large quantities of food. These greenhouses could serve to cool and purify air for the residents of the buildings below them, too.

Going by current trends, the future 80,000 residents of Fishermans bend will produce around two tonnes of waste each, and around half of this will be organic. That’s 80,000 tonnes of organic waste, each year, going to landfill. Anything organic – whether it’s from the garbage bin or the toilet – can be used to produce natural gas (biogas). Biogas can be burnt in small, neighbourhood-scale gas systems to produce cheap heat and electricity (this is called ‘cogeneration’). Biogas use for cogeneration already happens in Denmark, and plans are in place for Sydney to go down the same path.

Even solar energy benefits from precinct-scale planning; locations best suited for large-scale solar generation (like they’ve got on the roof of the University of Queensland) could be identified, and height controls could ensure that these areas aren’t overshadowed. With 250 hectares to work with, the potential for panels is vast.

If we put all these ideas together, it becomes clear that, with the right combination of creativity and advanced technology, new suburbs can approach self-sufficiency, and in some cases become a source of resources instead of a sink. The devil is often in the detail with these things, but the potential is there – The thing is, planning for sustainability at the precinct scale requires serious government leadership; the current design guidelines for individual developments won't be enough.

Fortunately, tools to measure precinct-scale sustainability are already emerging globally, with the GBCA having recently released the ‘Green Star Communities’ tool, which takes the idea of star ratings beyond the usual focus of individual buildings. It also goes beyond environmental issues, with key parts of the tool focused on issues like liveability, governance, urban design and economic prosperity. It strikes me that these criteria could be helpful in guiding us away from the dire prediction of ‘another Docklands’.

It’s hard to create place from scratch, as the Docklands experience has shown, especially when it’s instantly compared to a CBD that’s over 150 years old. A true sense of place (or a ‘soul’ if you like) comes with age, but here at Fishermans Bend we have the opportunity to make a good start with memorable sustainability and aesthetic initiatives.

To its credit, the Strategic Framework Plan admits that it isn’t complete, and is clear there is plenty of scope for future review. With tower approvals already commencing in this area, I hope we see proactive, precinct-scale sustainability plans to seize the huge opportunities that the current plan isn't pursuing.

After all, the chance to develop a new suburb with a clear identity as Australia’s greenest, right in the heart of Melbourne, really is ‘once in a lifetime’ – as the pollies like to say.

Thami Croeser is a Town Planner at Tract Consultants and a Master of Urban Planning student at the University of Melbourne. Follow Thami on <a href="https://twitter.com/GibbonTake">Twitter</a>.

Lead image courtesy yarrariver.info.
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Tract TC

Fishermans Bend: how to avoid another Docklands

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Working at Tract Consultants near Bridge Road in Richmond gives me a front-row seat on the city's sad trend of high-street decline. Every day, I watch one of the city's key retail strips slowly lose tenants. Walking to get my lunch, I often pass three or four empty shops in a row - and the ones that are still open are having closing-down sales. My guess is that 30% of the shops are vacant.

This decline has been going on for a while, but yesterday I noticed a new sign of desperation: a number of shops on the street are displaying this poster in their windows.

<img alt="" height="429" src="/sites/urbanmelbourne.info/files/pictures/article-images/free-parking-sign-bridge-road.jpg" width="286">

This campaign felt misguided to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

That evening I walked past the new H&amp;M and UNIQLO - where there are still queues out the door on some nights. Next, I got home and unwrapped a parcel, containing a new pair of shoes I'd bought online, cheaply, from Asos in England.

It dawned on me - rather guiltily - that if our inner-urban shopping strips die, parking won't be the reason.

High-street retailers face two brutal competitors, in the form of big-box retail and online shopfronts. Both are vastly better at marketing, and have the advantage of advanced supply chains and economies of scale. This enables them to easily undercut small operators, even displacing the outlet stores of Bridge Road. They're simply more competitive - if you're only looking at prices.

The thing is, nobody dreams of living on a quaint little street with a friendly local lKEA, Zara and DFO. Large retailers, while cheap, are just as anonymous as eBay; they add no identity to the places they set up in, nor do their owners truly belong to the community in the way a small business owner does.

Small retailers are essential to the fine-grained, individual appeal of our Main Streets. These active, diverse frontages create the walkable, interesting environments that Australians from other cities marvel at. In short, small retail is an essential part of Melbourne's livability.

Despite this vital contribution to our city, the vacancies I see on Bridge Road suggest that we're collectively putting low prices first - or that at times we're content to act as 'free riders' by enjoying these beautiful streets while shopping in cheaper, less distinctive places. Maybe this is because we're subject to a constant economic narrative of 'belt-tightening'; maybe we just like having more stuff. Maybe shopping on the couch with iPad in hand is just easier.

Either way, the fact that residential development in these areas is moving at a crawl certainly isn't helping local retailers keep up. Sure, there are some apartment towers popping up behind the shops, buts this growth is too slow to offset the loss of regional customers. The local customer base isn't growing very fast, but the overheads - and competitors - are. Meanwhile, residential growth at the fringe (and in the CBD) continues apace, where regulations are more conducive.

I spoke to The University of Melbourne's Kim Dovey, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, and he agrees that parking isn't the problem - but he isn't convinced that retail is in serious trouble.

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Bridge Road might be losing some retail space to online competitors, but high street retail will generally be fine. I'm hopeful that the less successful strips will become mixed spaces, with small-scale production workshops and studios filling the gaps between surviving stores.
<cite>Kim Dovey, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Melbourne</cite>
</blockquote>

I like the vision of Bridge Road as a place where things get made. Watching a 3D printer do its thing might be just as good as window shopping. I'm also hopeful that a rise in shop-top residential could effectively cross-subsidise street retailers, providing landlords with a new income stream and enabling them to ease off on retail rental rates, which are often blamed for high vacancy rates. Perhaps Bridge Road will simply shift from its regional factory outlet role into one focused on day-to­day local needs; this is working very well for Swan Street nearby.

Tract will be conducting a corporate forum on revitalizing Main Streets later this year, focusing on our doorstep - Bridge Road. Hosted from some vacant Bridge Road shops, our range of local and interstate experts will shed some light on why some streets thrive and why others dwindle.

From what I've seen, the successful Main Streets display authenticity, localism, and retail diversity. They need amenity from high quality streetscapes, an active trader association, and a growing residential catchment. Parking does matter, but it's only one factor among many and it doesn't solely explain the decline of Bridge Road. I look forward to a broader discussion later this year to bring out some really inspired ideas for the future of this iconic street.

Thami Croeser is an Assistant Town Planner at Tract Consultants and studies at the University of Melbourne. This article first appeared in Planning Institute of Australia, Victoria Division's "Planning News" June 2014 issue.
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Will free parking save Bridge Road?

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Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at blank brick walls.

Whenever I’m in Melbourne, I find myself doing this, and the question that always springs to mind is the same: “Why is nothing growing on these walls?”

In a city that’s generally quite efficient at filling empty spaces, the uncounted hectares of unutilised vertical space stay largely barren, year after year. This is despite an abundance of ways to cultivate vegetation vertically, and a broad evidence base on the many benefits of urban greening.

Recently, I did a bit of looking into the reasons for this lack of change, and the most straightforward answer I could find is that it isn’t directly profitable for anyone to green up these empty spaces. In fact, some green walls and facades can be quite expensive to establish and maintain. The same is true for green roofs, which can quickly perish if the wrong species and soils are used.

Despite the costs, the benefits of urban greening are substantial. Researchers have found that urban green roofs, walls and facades can reduce the urban heat island effect, reduce peak stormwater flows and improve air quality. Some studies suggest that urban greenery also reduces stress, increases property values, and even reduces patient recovery time in hospitals.

With such a suite of benefits, it’s worth asking how cities can encourage urban greening, since market forces alone aren’t doing the job at the moment. It may be that councils can get change happening by providing incentives – or even mandating greening. Around the world, governments are exploring options to green up urban spaces.

Melbourne is no exception. The IMAP (Inner Melbourne Action Plan) is an alliance of inner-city councils that recently completed a review of policy options for encouraging green roofs, walls and facades. The review identified quite a few options. One initiative that the review suggests is a reduced rates charge for buildings with green roofs, walls or facades. Other options to make greening more profitable might include fast-tracking of permit applications, waived planning fees or exemptions from some planning requirements. If set at the right level, these incentives have the potential to spark a wave of green developments on both new and existing buildings.

However, when I asked Dr Dominque Hes, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne, whether an incentive like a rates discount would do the trick, she cautioned against silver bullets:

<blockquote>
A discount on rates or drainage fees could certainly get the ball rolling, but money isn’t the only challenge we face. Green infrastructure generally needs reliable irrigation and regular maintenance. It’s a novel concept to many building owners, and it can go wrong. When you’re talking about quite substantial capital outlays for unfamiliar building upgrades, the risk of failure can be offputting.
<cite>Dr Dominque Hes, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, University of Melbourne</cite>
</blockquote>

Fortunately, this sentiment is reflected by IMAP’s policy review. While financial incentives will help, councils have a role to play by setting good examples on public buildings, as the Victorian EPA has done with the green wall outside its offices on Victoria street. The review suggests that councils will also need to reduce unnecessary regulatory hurdles such as permit application requirements for small green infrastructure developments.

For some building owners, recognition might be as powerful an incentive as money. Rating schemes for building energy efficiency, like Green Star or NABERS, generally don’t give green roofs or walls much in the way of credit. This is despite the potential for greening to reduce cooling requirements in buildings. If having a green roof meant an easier path to a Green Star rating or a less demanding NABERS retrofit, some of the CBD’s blank walls might quickly go green.

Some cities have taken a different path. Cities including Toronto, Stuttgart and Copenhagen are opting for regulation on top of encouragement, in a bid to green up the city’s rooftops. For example, permit applications for most new buildings over 2000m2 in Toronto must have green roofs covering at least 20% of the total roof area.

Of course, any successful set of new policies to encourage greening must be accompanied by solid guidance on how to do this greening. Fortunately this guidance already exists; the IMAP’s Growing Green Guide gives a fairly thorough run-down on how to design, build and maintain green walls, roofs and facades.

With such an array of policy options, and an excellent information resource already in place, the ball is now in the court of policymakers. Watch closely in coming months as councils plan their next moves.

This article first appeared at <a href="http://tract.com.au/news/could-money-one-day-grow-on-rooftop-trees/">Tract Consultants</a>. For further information and additional articles, visit the <a href="http://tract.com.au/news/">Tract news portal</a>.
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Thami Croeser

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