Urban Planning.

I happened to come across The Urban Planner website while browsing planning-related stuff and I found a few interesting posts. This one in particular lists 15 things that one should know about urban planning.

It's titled as 15 Beautiful and Informative Urban Planning Infographics. The things listed below explores the different aspects of urban planning. The 15 things are:

1. World Population Density.
2. Space Taken by 60 People.
3. 1972 System Map.
4. Locals and Tourists.
5. Burning Man Infographic.
6. 311 Calls and New York City.
7. Cost of owning a car.
8. Most Bike-Friendly Cities.
9. What is Your Water Footprint?.
10. Ring Roads of the World.
11. America’s Best & Worst Commutes.
12. The Systematic City.
13. Bike-Opolis.
14. Public Transportation.
15. Understanding Chinese Energy.

If you're bored or want to know more about urban planning, go check some of the sites out. I'm sure out of the 15 you'll find something that interests you. I did and they are informative in their own simple way.

Silo Park.

I was researching about Auckland's urban features and I stumbled upon the 360 Urban website. I looked through it and saw current and planned projects around New Zealand. What caught my attention is Silo Park in Jellicoe St, Auckland.

The project is to transform the once industrial area into an adrenaline fueled adventure park with NZ's funkiest playground, retail, dining and views of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Currently, the project is still under construction. Rain gardens for drainage has been made and are being filled with soil to be planted with native plants.

What Jellicoe St. looks like now.
Photo credit: Waterfront Auckland

Once finished, Jellicoe St. Wynyard Quarter will hopefully look like this:

Public open space, retail and dining services and views of the harbour. Not bad at all.
Photo credit: Waterfront Auckland

The nearby Silo Park will be an open space that will offer views of the Westhaven Marina and Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Photo credit: Waterfront Auckland

Silo Park will retain the cement silo and 'six pack' to recognise the industrial heritage of the area. It will offer great public open space with views of the Marina and the Harbour bridge and a cinema during summertime. The key uses of the park will be for recreation, water treatment, events and as a play area as shown in the photo below.

Photo credit: Urbika

I think this is a great project. Auckland's waterfront is not really something to be proud of due to the tanks and ugly ships docked in the viaduct. Projects like Silo Park will make the waterfront visually appealing and also accessible to people.

To see more photos and plans of Silo Park, go to Urbika and Waterfront Auckland. An animation of what the waterfront would look like has been made and you can view it here.

NY's Pedestrian Plazas.

In my last post, I said that Mayor Len Brown talked about the desire to turn Queen St. into a pedestrian-only space. I personally love the idea of making it a pedestrian mall. On a survey done recently, 64% of Aucklanders wanted more pedestrian access to Queen St. with either no traffic at all or shared by pedestrians and vehicles with businesses in the area. I think it is good that people want the change. Shame on the 33% who wanted to keep it as it is. I find the footpath in Queen St. too small and in peak hours, it is terrible to walk through it because sometimes you can get sandwiched by random people. Making Queen St more pedestrian-friendly will definitely be a good thing.

For example is New York. The city is known for its horrendous traffic and in 2009, Times Square was closed off for vehicles from 42nd St. 43rd St. as an experiment and to see if the idea can work and how the public will react. There were mixed views but most people really seem to like the idea. Watch the video to see what was done to Times Square:

Maybe we can try an experiment like this for Queen St to see how people  would react to the change. I think it will attract more people, businesses on the main street will benefit and based on Times Square's example, it improves air quality in the city.

What do you think? Is this a good idea or not? Can an experiment like this be applied in Auckland?

If you want to know more about the NY's pedestrian plaza programme, click the links below:

NYC Dot
Smarter Cities
Inhabitat
Shareable Cities

Shared Space Launch.

Image from Auckland Council's Facebook page.

Today, Auckland's first ever shared space was launched. Darby Street in Auckland City is the first shared space to be completed this year. I already blogged about other shared spaces being constructed around the city (Fort St. and Elliot St. The latter is currently under construction and completion will be around early 2012).

The event was well-received by many. It started at noon by the band Jimmy and the Goodbrew followed by Kidz in Space, a speech by Mayor Len Brown and finally Kingston. The bands attracted many people but there was also a photo/video kiosk, prize draw and free Mr. Whippy ice creams and Coke.

I personally enjoyed the launch. The bands performed well. Kidz in Space was the main attraction of the event and their performance was liked by many. People were dancing and many passers-by actually stayed for a few songs.

As for the shared space itself, I like it. It is definitely better than what it used to be. I think it's a good idea to have spaces like these around Auckland but the event today made me think that Darby St could have easily been a full pedestrian space and not a shared space (since it was closed off to cars due to the event). Shared space or not, it is still an improvement. 

Here are photos that I took during the event:

Different figures with descriptions to give people an idea of what shared spaces are.

The people enjoying the space. The guy on the left is maybe enjoying it a bit too much...

Kidz in Space performing.

The pleased crowd.

Mayor Len Brown officially launching the shared space.
Yes, that is Christopher Dempsey behind him (our last year's lecturer and now member of the Waitemata local board)

The launch was a good way to spend a Friday afternoon as told by the person sitting beside me. I asked a few people what they thought of the new look of Darby Street and they all seem to like it and hope other streets in Auckland will follow too. Len Brown also said in his short speech that there has been talks about Queen St. being turned into a full pedestrian mall. I really hope it happens one day.

I'll leave you with a short video of Kidz in Space performing and the crowd loving it and the speech of Len Brown thanking the people who made Darby St a shared space possible:

The little kid is cute and she danced in every song they played!

Sorry for the shaky video. My hand was getting tired holding my camera up.

You can see Chris in this video too as a member of Waitemata local board.

*All photos and videos are taken by myself.

Money well spent or a complete waste?

The proposed Te Waka Maori Pavillion
Image from NZ Herald

There has been a lot of talk today about the proposed Waka Pavillion to be built in Auckland's waterfront for the upcoming Rugby World Cup. The Waka will be 60m long and 15m high and made out of plastic. The buzz is about how much it will cost to build the structure. It has been estimated to cost around 2 million dollars.

People who are opposed to the idea is saying that the Waka structure is unnecessary and a waste of money. The government is spending around 1.8million on it and $100,000 is from Ngati Whatua o Orakei who will own the structure after it's built. Is it really necessary for the government to spend that much money on something that they will not even own afterwards?

I think the idea of promoting Maori culture during the world cup is essential. However, I don't think building this structure is the best one to do so. The structure will be made out of plastic which may look very artificial as a real waka is made out of wood. It will also be designed to be easily deconstructed so that it will be portable and can be transferred around the country.

It is a very expensive project. Along with the Cloud, the government has been spending so much in preparation for the Rugby World Cup (9.8 million for the Cloud and 2million for the waka). I don't think the waka is necessary to promote Maori. If they want an iconic structure to represent the Maori culture in New Zealand, then a temporary blow up waka isn't the best idea. Personally, I could think of other ways to spend the 2million dollars to promote Maori heritage and culture. The structure might look interesting and inviting to tourists but what will happen after the world cup? Where will it go? Who gets the profits for it?

These are more photos of what the waka would look like:

Images from NZ Herald

What do you think? Is this worth 2million dollars or is the government wasting taxpayer's money?

If you want to know more about this and answer the poll, read today's NZ Herald, Dominion Post and Radio NZ.

Increase in Public Transport.

In a NZ Herald article by Matthew Dearnaley, it talked about the increase of public transport use in past twelve months due to increasing petrol prices. There is a high demand for public transport at the moment because of rising price of fuel. Over the past year, there has been an increase of up to 7.9% in bus trips, 13.9% on trains and 3.5% on ferries.

Auckland Transport also released Public Transport Figures yesterday, outlining the massive increase of users. These are some of the points Auckland Transport has released:

• Northern Express bus passenger numbers for February increased 20.7 per cent on February 2010. Total Northern Express for the past 12 months reached 1.97 million passengers
• Total bus patronage exceeded 50 million. An increase of 3.36 million boardings or 7.5 per cent growth
• Rail patronage reached 9.2 million for the past 12 months with passenger numbers for the month of February up 17.9 per cent on February 2010. For the first time one million journeys were reached on rail in one month.
• Rail patronage on the Western Line for the month of February increased 25.6 per cent on February 2010 to reach 305,208.
• Ferry patronage totalled 4.6 million for the 12 months to February, with passenger numbers for the month up 12.6 per cent on February 2010
• Of the 30,002 attending the Super Rugby Blues vs. Crusaders at Eden Park on 19 February 31.9 per cent took special event public transport services.

I know that the Northern Express is an efficient bus service in the North Shore and I have noticed year by year the increase of its users. Currently, it is over capacity but it truly shows that more and more people are using public transport. In the article, it noted that Ritchies Transport is considering adding more buses to the Northern Express service and there has been talks about developing a more efficient loading system at Britomart due to long queues.

I think the increasing number of PT users is great news. People are changing their minds about driving and thinking about other options. I don't think the only reason is because of rising petrol prices. Public Transport has improved (though it has been at a very slow rate). Little by little, Auckland's transport system is getting better. These figures have proved it so. Yes there are still multiple problems and a lot of work to be done to the public transport system but it is definitely better than what we used to have five years ago.