Clovelly Road Better Block 2014 – Done and Dusted

After a hell-of-a-lot of Council and community engagement and event planning, the 2014 Clovelly Road Better Block streetscape improvement day was a raging success in October last year.

It was organised by the Park to Pacific Association, which is a community group set up to advocate for improved urban design and traffic outcomes for the entire length of Clovelly Road, from Centennial Park to the Pacific Ocean.

Better Block 2014, similar to the 2013 event down the road, was organised to demonstrate some ways the community can make their streets better places to live, work and socialise – with more trees and shrubs, street art, slower traffic speeds, more street furniture and creative public spaces. It is part of a movement that is based around short term action for long term change.

The event had some key aims, which were:
– To trial improvements to a small section of Clovelly Road, which may be made permanent and/ or used elsewhere in Clovelly Road or the City of Randwick
– To show how the street can be beautified (art, trees, shrubs, moveable street furniture)
– To raise awareness of possibilities for environmental improvements
– To promote local businesses by encouraging locals to shop local
– To enhance the sense of place for the ‘Hill Top’ village, where the 2014 event was held
– To bring attention to the benefits of lower car speeds
– To encourage the community to participate into streetscape design and to voice concerns and ideas regarding their local environment
– To foster a stronger community spirit

All in all, the one-day event went exceedingly well and the local community responded almost entirely positively to the majority of elements set up on the day. The Park to Pacific Association move into 2015 with hopes that Randwick Council will pick up on the positive community sentiment evident on and after the event day and incorporate many of the streetscape ideas trialed on the event day in their future planning for Clovelly Road.

16 super-advanced trees were craned into the ‘Hill Top’ village on Clovelly Road for the Better Block event day

Council approval was given for two very prominent blank building facades in the event area to be painted with murals by professional mural artists

The ‘Hill Top’ area, like other commercial areas on Clovelly Road, is almost entirely devoid of public seating. Street Furniture Australia donated a dozen of their products for the event day. These were very well received by both the community and business.

The footpaths of the event zone were spray-painted using sea and landscape motif stencils and some cute locational logos

The grand-daddy of all elements installed in Clovelly Road for the event was this semi-permanent parklet.

Streetscape redesign – Clovelly Road, Sydney

After several months of digesting the outcomes from the October 2013 Clovelly Road Better Block demonstration day, this streetscape improvement concept has morphed into a broader project – called “Park to Pacific” of “P2P”.

Rather than looking at Clovelly Road block-by-block, this arterial roadway ‘re-imagining’ exercise has developed into a more comprehensive urban design idea – to develop a beautification scheme for the entire length of Clovelly Road, from Centennial Park to the Pacific Ocean.

A passionate group of local residents involved in the 2013 demo day (members of whom include professionals in urban design, architecture, arboriculture and landscape architecture) formed a steering committee to advance the cause of this concept. The steering committee has, for the last six weeks, been petitioning local businesses and residents, and most importantly Randwick Council.

The Council has expressed their support for the P2P idea and were one of the three levels of government present at a community presentation day early in May.

The core idea for the Park to Pacific concept is overall streetscape improvement to create a greener, more aesthetically pleasing, more functional, safer and more sustainable Clovelly Road. The detail of this may involve vast increase in street tree numbers, regular ‘bulb-out’ parklets in the roadway (both within and between commercial nodes), definitional road surfacing and markers for the commercial nodes, in-lane bus-stops, rainwater gardens, community gardens, bus-stop libraries and vehicle slowing devices, amongst other components.

The steering committee has presented the P2P idea with a conceptual illustration (below) containing some of the above components.

They have also started developing concept plans for some of the components described above and for complete sectors of Clovelly Road, to help stimulate discussions with Randwick Council and the local community. A roadway parklet concept layout which they have developed is below, as is a photographic info sheet on streetscape elements which they are proposing for consideration.

In the upcoming months the P2P team will be having regular community meetings at the Randwick Literary Institute on Clovelly Road and have been designated a community liaison officer by Randwick Council, both to work with the P2P group on Park to Pacific ideas and on the next Better Block demo day (in support of P2P) in October 2014.

For more info, have a look at http://www.parktopacific.org and http://www.facebook.com/parktopacific

 

 

 

 

Improving our streets

I recently became involved with planning for the Clovelly Road Better Block demonstration day, which is to be held on the 27th October.

On that day, traffic in a section of Clovelly Road, in Sydney’s east, will be slowed – under the auspices of Randwick Council. The Clovelly East Village Committee will then ‘install’ – for a day – a representation of part of its vision for improvements to this high-use transit corridor.

The improvements are aimed at showing the community at large and the Council, more specifically, how this main road could be re-planned to create a greener and more liveable space. The Committee has not only organised nurseries to supply semi-mature trees and a lot of shrubs for the day, but is also planning for art installations, street furniture, re-surfaced pedestrian areas, bicycle parking and bike servicing zones, community stalls and a permaculture garden.

The organisation hopes to create a groundswell of support for some permanent changes. This will be the first Better Block in Sydney (there have been more than 40 in the United States).

If you’d like to see how a forgotten streetscape can be remediated, come down to Clovelly Road (the block between Arden Street and Beach Street) on Sunday 27th October between 11am and 3:30pm.

http://www.facebook.com/ClovellyRoad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lud5-UhAVxQ

Clovelly Road, looking east from Arden Street – the ‘Better Block’ area.

(www.facebook.com/events/475788085832193)