The roads are wide in Fishermans Bend.
They are also one of the precincts greatest assets for their potential to be used for open space1 according to Tracey Slatter, former CEO of the City of Port Phillip.
Fishermans Bend is car dominated during the week, and the footpaths are quiet. On weekends, drivers take the opportunity of the wide open roads to pick up speed, and the footpaths (such as they are) are quieter still.
In a future Fishermans Bend – (the vision being realised?) – the bitumen will be peeled back and these streets will become places for people rather than principally for individual car movements.
I’d like to introduce you to two wide roads that will be important to Fishermans Bend in the future – Buckhurst Street and Turner Street.
Here is Buckhurst Street
Buckhurst Street was once the central street of the small, contained community of Montague in South Melbourne. There are still clues that Buckhurst Street was once a residential street – just like in Port or South Melbourne – the network of blue stone lanes, and some remnant heritage buildings. Children played in the street since the houses were small and the families large. People lived and worked here. Cars were rare.
It fits that the street is named after William Parton Buckhurst – auctioneer, estate agent and developer. He built elegant Rochester Terrace in St Vincents Place South, ‘ the finest and largest classic revival terrace development in Victoria’2 – and went on to live in Toorak.
Buckhurst Street has city familiar attributes including Burgerlove hidden down lane like George Street and character filled heritage buildings such as the former Milsun Confectionary Factory.
The nature strips in Buckhurst Street are tree lined with mature lilly pillies bleeding colour in September and a block of olive trees.
At its northern end, Buckhurst Street will open onto the Ferrars St community and education precinct, currently under construction. The project, designed by Hayball, recently won the Future Project of the Year award at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin. Director Richard Leonard said that ‘What we’re most proud of is the combination of a learning hub with a community centre for the local residents to enjoy, which embraces the connection between learning and recreation, students and neighbours.’3
There was no Turner Street when children from the nearby Fishermans Bend Migrant Hostel played there. It was like an Enid Blyton story, recalls former hostel resident Robin Nash, where the children constructed an imaginary world out of the mini-islands in the swamp. Their parents would make their way over the informal sandy terrain to work at GMH.
Turner Street is a relatively new street, perhaps constructed in the late ’50s. It cuts across Fishermans Bend like a knife connecting the only two east west streets – Ingles and Salmon Street.
Right now the roads are few and far between in Fishermans Bend making for a long walk between destinations with no benches, minimal shade and wide nature strips but inadequate footpaths. Those attributes are conta-indicated for walking.
While Turner St is not as wide as Port Melbourne’s Railway Reserves, you don’t even need to be an urban dreamer to see the possibility of a tram running down the middle flanked by walking and cycling on either side.
And roads will become streets
The Fishermans Bend Vision has a target of 80% of trips to be made by active transport – that is by walking, riding and public transport. People have laughed out loud on hearing this audacious target which has not achieved anywhere else in Melbourne – even in the most public transport rich, cycling supporting, City of Yarra.
I want to achieve this target.
Jan Gehl, the globally influential people-centred Danish urban designer, who has done so much to make Melbourne the place it is today, gives us insights into how it can be achieved.
At a talk he gave in Melbourne in 2011, he cajoled city planners to be ‘be sweet to cycling, be sweet to walking’. Dividing multi-lane streets into space for trees, bike lanes, medians transforms streets from primarily about transportation to places for people. A good public realm and a good public transportation system are ‘like bother and sister’, he said.
Gehl will be giving a talk at the M Pavilion on 10 February at 6pm. It’s free but be there early as he is very popular. City of Melbourne’s Rob Adams ‘make a good street, and you make a good city’ will also present.
More
1 SGS Seminar Melbourne – How to pay for the compact city
2 Rochester Terrace Victorian Heritage Database
3 Vertical school wins Future Project of the Year
Dr Robert Grogan William Parton Buckhurst City of Port Phillip heritage website
Street Furniture Australia offers this explanation of the difference between a road and a street:
A ‘street’ is a place in its own right. It is for all users and transport modes, and encompasses all that occurs building-to-building; including the building fronts themselves whereas a road is a ‘road’ is a right of way between two points, prioritising thoroughfare (primarily for vehicles) over amenity.