Why it's worth doing
When you design streets exclusively for cars, all you get is traffic. When you design them for people, you get all the things that come along with that: community, leisure, connection, recreation, commerce and celebration. If you’ve ever despaired that the only place to really ‘hang out’ these days are soulless shopping malls, it’s because they’ve completely replaced our streets as the centre of our town, except their priority is commerce, not community. If you’d like to see the life return to your neighbourhood, the best place to start is in the streets. And what’s good for our streets is also good for business: studies have shown* that people walking or riding a bicycle spend more money in local retailers than people arriving by car.
What's getting in the way?
Over time we’ve allowed our streets to become noisy, traffic-filled roads and it’s keeping us from enjoying the businesses and activities on offer. Noisy, dangerous traffic puts people off spending time on a high street, which dampens economic activity. Ever notice the streets that are busy with traffic are usually also lined with ‘For Lease’ signs in shop windows? That’s no coincidence. It sets off a vicious cycle of under-investment in streetscaping by local councils (“Why bother? No one goes there anyway!), lower patronage and more retail vacancies. Streets with lower pedestrian activity are perceived to be less safe, further draining life from the area. Pretty soon the street feels too far gone to save.
How we make positive change
This really relies on momentum, which generally has to start with the governments (state and local) stepping in to provide a mix of:
- More pedestrian crossings in the places where people want to cross
- Traffic calming and safer speeds
- Space for people to walk and rest on wider pavements, plazas
- Easy access by bike and plenty of bike parking
- Traffic-free shopping streets and days
- Plants, planters and street furniture
How you can get started
If you’d like to bring your local group or other organisation into the Better Streets coalition, and help boost local business in your neighbourhood, contact contact@betterstreets.org.au.
Protip: let you community take their better street for a test run by organising a street party. Easy to follow guides are available from City of Sydney (link) and the Department of Planning link. Why? Because better streets mean better street parties!
Protip: let you community take their better street for a test run by organising a street party. Easy to follow guides are available from City of Sydney (link) and the Department of Planning link. Why? Because better streets mean better street parties!