Thursday, April 28, 2005
Reclaiming the streets

On arrival from a crowded island such as Britain, one of the first things that strikes you about Brisbane’s suburban streets is their emptiness; sparse expanses of bitumen, comfortably wide enough for four lanes of traffic, baking in the sun and devoid of parked cars.

A legacy of readily available land has allowed wide suburban streets to flourish and low density housing - a theme in Brisbane’s suburbs - means there are fewer vehicles per hectare. Large yards, often over 700m2, have enabled most of these cars to be stored off road.

At 5.30pm in most UK suburban streets car drivers are preoccupied with how far from their front door they will be forced to park; that is after they have negotiated several overcrowded streets, weaving in and out of cars strewn over the road, parked up on verges and blocking junctions.

In contrast, 5.30pm in Brisbane and, yes, the streets are busier, but residents calmly pull their cars into their carports and garages.

This is generally true for most Australian cities which has now led Unley City Council, in Adelaide, to begin unpaving the streets to reclaim the land as green space. Wide suburban streets have been narrowed to two lanes, the bitumen dug up and replanted with native flora, creating a linear, vegetated street-scape. (See www.unley.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=498)

Many Brisbane streets are already blessed with wide verges and the council has long embarked on tree a planting program to provide shade and scenic amenity for pathways. Generally, residents are responsible for the upkeep of the verge (at least the non-aboricultural aspects) and for the most part do a pretty good job of keeping the grass trimmed. Each year the council offers two free native plants to rate-paying residents to plant in their yards.

But in Unley, the council has taken this much, much further. The immediate benefits, of improving scenic amenity, are obvious, but a number of additional benefits make this an excellent scheme for improving community sustainability:

• Creating an innovative, shady and pleasant street-scape will make walking and cycling more attractive options for short trips; thus reducing the incidence of private car journeys. As a further benefit, community health will be improved.
  
• Reducing the width of the roads will naturally reduce average road speeds through residential areas;
  
• Linear green space will create wildlife corridors, protecting biodiversity and improving migration opportunities for suburban wildlife. The planting of native species will improve opportunities for native suburban bird life to remain competitive with exotic species;
  
• Other amenity benefits will accrue, including traffic noise attenuation and reducing ground temperatures in summer by providing shade;
  
• Less hardstanding, more green space and a greater number of trees will reduce the speed of storm water run off into drains and straight into the creeks. Instead, ground water would seep steadily, improving the regularity of flow, water quality and health of the creeks;
  
• Carbon capture will help to meet reduced greenhouse gas emissions outcomes;
  
• Further intangible benefits, particularly when the local community is involved in the creation and maintenance of the green space, will include fostering greater community pride in local landscape and wildlife.

In Brisbane, the average width of a suburban street is between eight and twelve metres. Assuming that most streets could be reduced in width by 30-40%, each 2.5 to 3 kilometres of suburban road could potentially yield up to 1 hectare of additional green space. A roll-out of such a scheme in a suburb like my own, Northgate, on Brisbane’s northside, could yield far greater green space than what currently exists in the form of park land and water catchment.

Of course there are significant obstacles to this suburban wilderness utopia, not least the current political climate in Brisbane itself, where the current Lord Mayor is focussed more on laying down bitumen than pulling it up, following his very public 5-tunnels election platform. Expanding infrastructure, particularly the major road network is number one priority to improve access and speed for vehicular traffic.

But there are also other constraints, including initial cost roll out, ongoing maintenance and greater risk for roads and subterranean infrastructure from errant roots. Increased housing densities (as dictated by the SEQ Regional Plan) and growth of car ownership per dwelling may also increase the need for greater vehicle storage capacity on the city’s roads.

But rather than lay ever more hectares of bitumen, and blithely accept the vehicular traffic growth predictions, why not start taking the policy initiative and pull up the bitumen which is excess to requirements and reclaim the streets for people and possums?

---