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.
Successful products are often followed by copycats. Over the past year we have become aware of an increase in reproductions of the Linea range attempting to create a similar aesthetic at a lower price. This can compromise the overall durability and environmental credentials of projects being delivered, affect ongoing maintenance requirements, and in some instances pose a risk of injury to the public. The design of Linea is deceptively simple while delivering exceptional attention to detail. Details matter not only for beauty, but also for providing durability, and safety, that will last decades. Linea strictly uses the highest quality and sustainable materials, has passed rigorous strength tests, and is designed for longevity, with easily replaceable parts. The product range is the result of hundreds of hours of research and development …
Street Furniture Australia’s entire product range and manufacturing operation has received carbon neutral certification through Climate Active™. Achieving carbon neutral certification marks a significant milestone in our operation and the culmination of a four year long process of detailed measurement and analysis. Climate Active™ is the only Australian government-backed carbon neutral certification programme for businesses to measure, reduce, and offsets their carbon emissions. It is one of the most rigorous carbon-neutral programs in the world. An approved Emissions Reduction Strategy (ERS) is central to achieving certification through Climate Active. Street Furniture Australia has elected to use SBTi validated science-based targets to ensure their ERS is meaningful and aligns with the 2015 Paris Agreement – to limit global temperature rises to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. For those emissions that can’t be …
Our Presentation Specialists bring a fun, interactive and informative workshop about our carbon neutral journey and latest products to your office. In 30 minutes (plus Q&A) you will explore materials and finishes, touch and feel samples, and bond with your colleagues over delicious treats in the comfort of your office. There will also be a mystery prize for a lucky winner (optional). ‘The presentation content was informative, engaging, interactive and relevant. Genuinely one of the better supplier workshops! It was efficient yet insightful. The interactive nature of it enhanced engagement with the team,’ Sam Westlake, Senior Associate, Hassell, Sydney. ‘Possibly our favourite product presentation to date! Engaging, great content and appreciated the physical samples and prototypes,’ Alexa Ongoco, Senior Landscape Architect, TCL, Brisbane. ‘Thorough presentation with actual product to see and …
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 …
