Podcast by Two Urban Designers – From Shopping Malls to Coronavirus:
Adelaide (un)Planned is a slick and engaging podcast exploring design and planning in Adelaide, South Australia – the good, bad and (sometimes) ugly. What is it that makes this city one of the most liveable in the world?
Presented by Michael McKeown, Director and Urban Designer at Jensen PLUS, and Daniel Bennett, Urban Design Strategy Lead with Architectus, the podcast has recently celebrated its tenth episode.
Each instalment features conversations with some of Adelaide’s leading thinkers, planners and design professionals, selected for their opinions, insights, stories and good humour.
Expect discussion about well-known and changing places, streets and developments, and topical chats about landscape, transport, the environment and civic leadership.
We recommend starting with episode seven, Coronavirus and the City, Part 1. Michael and Daniel discuss what Adelaide may learn from the pandemic – will our local shops be revitalised by the ‘great work from home experiment’ and a return to localism? What can we take from the increased use of parks and many public spaces? Will there really be a return to suburban values and gardening?
Our Cities May Never Look the Same Again After the Pandemic:
Cities are introducing public space interventions to attempt to control the spread of Covid-19. It is unclear if these initiatives will continue once the pandemic is over, and what the virus means for planning ideals of connected community places with ‘sticky’ streets, writes Oscar Holland for CNN.
“For advocates of walkable, unpolluted and vehicle-free cities, the past few weeks have offered an unprecedented opportunity to test the ideas they have long lobbied for,” he writes.
“With Covid-19 lockdowns vastly reducing the use of roads and public transit systems, city authorities – from Liverpool to Lima – are taking advantage by closing streets to cars, opening others to bicycles and widening sidewalks to help residents maintain the six-foot distancing recommended by global health authorities.”
Holland highlights examples of how cities are currently reshaping public spaces – at least in the short term – and explores implications for future city design and planning.
The Street Furniture Australia factory, in Regents Park, Western Sydney, is both a manufacturing hub and R&D studio for our Australian-designed and made street furniture products. We run fun and informative group events for customers throughout the year, to share how products are designed, tested and built, and the latest products and projects. Director of Tract Julie Lee said: “It was a great opportunity for our team to look behind the scenes and understand the innovation, research and climate positive outcomes Street Furniture Australia is focusing on. Thank you for having us!” Place Design Group Associate, Liam Isaksen, said: “The factory tour is a fun experience to learn about the design and manufacturing process of public furniture we use in landscape architecture design. Seeing the work behind the scenes and …
Did you catch these most-read case studies, furnishing tips, new product announcements and special industry events in your StreetChat updates in 2023? Each month our StreetChat enewsletter publishes new projects, products and trends from the public domain; subscribe to receive it in your inbox. 10. Which design firm can see Longhorn Cattle from their office window? 2 countries. 9 cities. 300 landscape architects. Street Furniture Australia and USA partner Spruce & Gander visited offices in Australia and Texas. There were key similarities and some notable standouts. 9. Jazz at The Mint: Product and Book Launch Sydney landscape architects gathered at the iconic Mint Courtyard to launch a design book by our founding directors Darrel Conybeare and Bill Morrison, and expansions to the Linea collection. 8. 2023 Good Cause Giveaway goes to …
Street Furniture Australia has designed and built prototype charging stands as part of a Transport for NSW program to deliver free phone chargers at 15 Sydney train stations. Developed by Street Furniture Australia’s inhouse industrial designers in collaboration with Transport for NSW, the prototypes offer wireless, USB-A and USB-C charging, and can power 7 devices at once. They were built at the Street Furniture Australia factory in Western Sydney. Two Power Spots are now installed at Liverpool and Campbelltown stations. The $1 million Power Spots Project rollout to 15 transport hubs including Bankstown, Hurstville, Lidcombe, Penrith, Wynyard, Central, Town Hall and Bondi Junction will be completed by late 2024. NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the Power Spots provide peace of mind: “In the modern world, our phones are our …
Is Play a Cure for Loneliness? Communities that connect through play are well-placed to support each other in times of crisis writes Alison Stenning, Professor of Geography at Newcastle University and play streets activist, for The Developer. Stenning has published a report looking at the benefits of organised neighbourhood play sessions in the UK grassroots movement Playing Out, where streets are temporarily closed for games and chalk drawing. “Playing out’ is not just about play and not just for children,” she writes, as neighbours of all ages are encouraged to participate and form new relationships with others who live on their street. “These new connections enable and are reinforced by a proliferation of contact between neighbours outside of street play sessions. Neighbours lend and borrow equipment, ingredients, and occasionally money. …
Paris Mayor Calls for 15-Minute City: In her re-election campaign Mayor Anne Hidalgo proposes plans to ensure that every Paris resident can meet their essential needs within a short walk or bike ride, writes Feargus O’Sullivan forCity Lab. Mixing many uses within the same space challenges much of the planning status quo of the past century, O’Sullivan writes. It once made sense to separate residential zoning from industrial sites when urban factories posed health risks, he says, and car-centric suburban style zoning intensified the separation. Now some of the world’s most ambitious planning projects are bringing the zones back together: Barcelona’s superblocks, East London’s Every One Every Day and Portland, Oregon’s plans for 20-minute neighbourhoods. The project could be relatively easily achievable for Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who oversees the …
Could city parklands be used to house endangered fauna? UNSW students have proposed to create research and veterinary labs for native bats, birds and eels. Restored patches of habitat in Sydney’s Centennial Parklands could become sanctuaries for threatened species, they say. The proposal come from a two-week Sydney Urban Lab studio in January, overseen by US-based landscape architect Professor Richard Weller and Hassell. “In the case of Sydney, we decided to get a list of the species endangered both in the city and its region and the broader hotspot, which is really the eastern portion of Australia, and ask the question: could we take a piece of land in Sydney and use that as an incubator for these species, and from there the species could be relocated over time back …
