Design help for Local Government
Five years ago, driving most of the Shires of Murrindindi and Baw Baw as part of the Melbourne2030 fringe areas landscape assessment, gave me further appreciation of the varied and extensive landscapes of these areas - and now of the enormity of the bushfire devastation. It also gave me a further appreciation of the sense of place of each of the towns and hamlets which are the centre of each of these communities.
While the natural landscapes will repair over time, the towns will involve a massive rebuilding effort. Loss of much of the built fabric of these shires raises a number of questions which each of these communities will face:
How do we rebuild? Many of these town economies relied on their attractive built form, public domain and landscape settings. Do these communities want to recreate this character or reinterpret it in more contemporary forms?
Are all of the locations suitable for rebuilding in terms of locations of facilities as well as future bushfire exposure. The rush to rebuild and re-establish businesses may be at the expense of these and many other urban design issues, as well as the need for time for improving and adopting best practice building design techniques in terms of wildfire resilience.
To this end it seems important that each local government has in house design resources to guide each community in making these decisions about the future urban design and, specifically the public domain for each of the townships.
Also in this edition:
- London moves to Melbourne
- The art of place-making
- Activity Centre project in Kartal, Istanbul
- A River's Tale
- Good urban design in small regional towns
- Planning for future development
- Bush fires and global warming - density of rural settlements is the real issue
- Planning to live in the bush
- Musings over lunch
- What do urban designers have to say about the Victorian fires?
- Impressions of Freiburg
- Courses
- Conferences