Trend Watch February 2019

5 Inspiring Stories of Great Public Places:

The Project for Public Spaces has added five more entries to its international Great Public Spaces database.

In Moscow, 18 lanes of the capital’s ring road have been reduced to no more than 10 at any point to create the Garden Ring, with 13 new public spaces, 20 crosswalks, generous promenades and 2880 new trees.

In Vancouver, Alley Oop (pictured above) transforms an underused laneway into a place for play, with areas marked for basketball and hopscotch, seating and tables for comfort and a dedicated clean team. Strangers are seen playing together.

In Bristol, Electric Moon is an artwork and low-cost lighting installation designed to help pedestrians and cyclists see each other at a trouble spot on a dark shared path.

Historic Burns Court welcomes visitors to a tiny, pedestrian-friendly U-shaped laneway in Downtown Sarasota, Florida.

In Budapest, wavy timber lounge seats in the Városháza Park Pop-Up invite locals to relax and play in summer, with solar-powered outlets for phone charging.

Photo: Kim Bellavance.

Georges River Council to Install Outdoor Smart Hub Prototypes:

Three tailored ChillOUT hub prototypes with integrated smart technologies including WiFi, charging points, smart furniture, solar power and sensors will be installed in the Georges River Council local government area.

The hubs will be adapted to suit the needs of locals who use each installation site: an urban streetscape in Kogarah, suburban town centre in Mortdale and suburban park in Hurstville.

Georges River Council, the University of New South Wales and Street Furniture Australia received a $380,507 grant from round two of the federal government’s $50 million Smart Cities and Suburbs Program to carry out the project, after the collaborators’ success with the Smart Social Spaces project in round one.

Street Furniture Australia will co-design and manufacture the prototypes, with the University of New South Wales to install sensors including environmental gauges to capture urban heat data.

“As technology becomes more integrated into our lives, it’s important for councils to harness new technologies to better serve the needs of their communities and improve services,” Georges River Mayor Kevin Green told CIO.

“Sensors on smart furniture installed in Round 1 will enable us to access information on the daily use of public spaces and obtain data for more efficient maintenance and waste services.”