AN URBAN DESIGN PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE IN NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

Abstract

This paper highlights the nature and practice of urban design developed in a road agency over the course of 20 years and now applied as a mainstream approach in the peak transport body of the state of New South Wales, Australia. It draws universal lessons applicable to transport as a whole in any context. Its central theme is that urban design is necessary and powerful when planning, designing and building transport infrastructure but requires a policy framework. The paper extracts what it takes to develop such policy and succeed in practice, using selected project examples built over many years.

About the Author

Raeburn Chapman is an architect, urban designer and city and regional planner and an American Planning Association Life Member who has worked in academics, private consulting and government internationally. He is currently an independent urban design commentator and advisor specializing in transport infrastructure, having worked for the New South Wales State Government (Australia) where he introduced urban design as public policy.
Contact: editor@urbandesignreview.com

Background

The need for an urban design approach to road infrastructure became apparent in the mid-1990’s when there was increasing community opposition in Sydney to the way unattractive ‘highways’ (major limited-access roads) were cutting swathes through areas, in a way similar to the USA.  There was an expectation that such infrastructure should at least fit more sensitively into environments and be more aesthetically pleasing.  This was when urban design was formally introduced to the state’s road agency, the then Roads and Traffic Authority.  Urban design started to become part of the planning, design and implementation of projects and an urban design team established.

At the time the Roads and Traffic Authority was an engineering dominated organization focused on roads and traffic.  Although there was a small group advocating good landscape design solutions and an historic focus on innovative bridges, there was no joined-up urban design thinking anywhere in the transport area.

By 1999, urban design was formalized as a policy of the road agency governing how infrastructure required by the State government was to be done.  When the agency later became Roads and Maritime Services, extending its remit to maritime infrastructure as well as roads, bridges, tunnels and infrastructure for road based public transport and active transport, the original urban design team was re-established as the Centre for Urban Design, being recognized as a centre for excellence in the design of infrastructure.  Roads and Maritime Services, with the Centre for Urban Design, has recently been merged into various parts of the peak body Transport for New South Wales.

Urban design has been continuously negotiated and evolved over two decades in response to bureaucratic changes and political priorities and throughout an expanding and ever complex transport infrastructure program, with some interesting results.

The potential of urban design

What is urban design and its relation to transport?

Urban design, simply put, is the product and process of designing human settlements – cities, towns, regions, and mega-regions 1 – of which transport infrastructure is a vital element. Settlements that appear to develop organically invariably have their own underlying design structure.

Conversely, transport infrastructure can be a tool of design, or structuring medium, of human settlements.  It affects their form, functioning and visual quality as well as being a design element in itself to be experienced by communities and users.  Great streets are often portrayed as major design structure.

Urban design embraces the built environment, the constructed landscape and the natural environment (landform, vegetation and ecology}.  It involves conservation and new development and applies to urban and rural settings – what we build, protect or make possible in each.  Urban design, which requires architecture and landscape architecture skills and insights, is a necessary part of urban and regional planning adding a qualitative third dimension.

 Landscape as part of urban design

The landscape is germinal to urban design and its application to infrastructure.  It is neither the natural scenery alone or simply the vegetating of areas associated with infrastructure such as with grass, trees or shrubs, but goes much deeper and has many aspects.  A landscape is the coming together of the built and natural environment to make a place or total environment.  It has supporting natural systems and ecology, and can be experienced and used.  For Aboriginal communities the land itself is their (and collectively our) country and landscape which needs to be nurtured, protected (such as from highways), well managed and interpreted as a fundamental part of cultural heritage in infrastructure design.

Clarification on road infrastructure

Road corridors and networks are part of transport.  The road versus public transport debate when allocating resources is not right since a road is not a mode.

Road corridors and networks are infrastructure accommodating many modes of movement over and above car: Trucks, trade and service delivery vehicles (the economy on wheels); buses, coaches, light rail, taxis and ‘Uber’ (road-based mass transit); and, bicycle and pedestrian movement (active transport).  Also, they allow access to stations, bus terminals, ferry wharfs, ports and airports helping create multi-modal focal points city and region wide and multi-directional.

Road space will eventually alter with the introduction of driverless vehicles and such-like and possible long-term conversion of lane space to many other uses post-COVID19. The pandemic on the other hand has shown up the indispensability of road infrastructure to accommodate transport alternatives to crowded public transport.

As well as serving other transport systems, roads are a necessary complement to passenger and freight rail which operate differently.  Both are needed and the historic imbalance in resource allocation that has favoured road to the relative detriment of rail is now being redressed, at least in the Sydney context.

Not to be forgotten is the critical role played by road in supporting the widely spaced towns and farmlands making up the state’s regional economy.

The Eastern Distributor in Sydney – a catalyst for urban design in transport

The problem

This project, albeit 20 years old, represents a turning point in road infrastructure design in New South Wales and combined with the poorer outcomes referred to previously helped create the urban design movement in the Roads and Traffic Authority.

The purpose was to better connect the airport with downtown Sydney.  It was being planned as an 8-lane motorway at the same level as parks and residences, cutting a swathe through the city in the name of traffic efficiency.  The Cahill Expressway to which the Eastern Distributor had to join at the northern end had already cut The Domain, the major park of Sydney’s downtown in which the Art Gallery of New South Wales sits, in two. This sparked widespread concern.  The then Department of Planning, responsible for approving major projects in the State, rejected the Eastern Distributor proposal requesting that a fresh plan be developed with an urban design approach. Because the real problem was one of city design, getting the project right required a different way of working.

 A different way of working

The Roads and Traffic Authority created a dedicated urban design team to collaborate with the engineering team to develop a whole-of-corridor urban design framework and implement it, liaise with the former Urban Design Advisory Service within Planning and assist with community consultation.  The first step was to produce new architecturally-based three-dimensional models, sectional diagrams, elevations and sketches.  The aim was to visually identify and develop the urban design potentials for an improved experience in movement for each precinct the motorway would impact, the larger landscape setting and public domain quality of the motorway, and for what could be done in response to the character of the different precincts identified along the future motorway.  It eventuated in a new concept plan for the motorway which was integrated into a revised Environmental Impact Statement.

Key urban design results from the re-design

This new urban design approach resulted in a three-dimensional solution with a vastly reduced footprint.  It forms a gateway into Sydney with a motorway experience that makes the city imageable, leaves the urban fabric intact, continues the local street grid and adds significantly to the park system along the corridor.

In the Surry Hills precinct to the south, Moore Park has been developed from an informal parking lot into a major green space with landscaped terracing along the motorway edge.  The motorway is depressed in a deep cutting through the precinct to protect the Victorian heritage architectural townscape, and the pillars of its retaining walls are articulated to match the scale and rhythms of the terraces above.  Landscaped service roads paralleling the motorway and pedestrian bridges across the depression to Moore Park create local connectivity.

Figure 1. The motorway in slot through Surry Hills is integrated three-dimensionally with the scale and character of the precinct and improves the associated public domain as part of its design and scope of works. The landscaping is an investment that has taken many years to mature.

With its through-traffic transferred into the motorway, tree-lined streets re-instated, cycleways and street parking inserted and a network of pocket parks developed, Surry Hills has been transformed into a sought-after inner-city living environment that might otherwise have succumbed to high-rise development. A significant element has been retro-fitting of the Bourke Street one-way arterial through Surry Hills to create a two-way street for people.

The remaining motorway is put in tunnel in order to preserve the city, the Cathedral and its environs and the adjacent Art Gallery of New South Wales, around which a distinctive precinct is created.  Its main feature is the building of a large land-bridge (or ‘green lid’) over the Cahill Expressway to stitch the Domain together again, reinforce the connection with the Cathedral precinct and improve the setting of the gallery.

Figure 2. The extensive land-bridge creates a new landscaped setting for the New Art Gallery and major public open space.

The land-bridge is a constructed landscape: As well as its organic shape on plan the deck is formed to restore the natural contours that existed before the Cahill Expressway was built.  Its extensive planting and drainage systems set a new benchmark for ecologically sustainable development in the heart of the city 2.

Construction has recently begun on Art Gallery Modern, a large addition to the existing gallery which is terraced down the hillside to the harbour (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Aerial view of land-bridge over the Cahill Expressway with existing Art Gallery of New South Wales and the proposed extensive Art Gallery Modern (overlaid in white).

This utilizes former WWII oil storage facilities to create a unique gallery space.  However, it is something of anomaly that part of the new gallery is being built on the hard-won land-bridge thereby diminishing its full open space, scale, visual and landscape and recreational value 3.

With the features described above, the motorway was approved by Planning.  It has won many awards and is widely considered a success in infrastructure design and building.  The motorway was the first truly city shaping exercise in infrastructure by the road agency.  It constituted a significant ‘greening’ of the city, set the pattern for future projects and was a basis for what has become common practice in New South Wales to build motorways (and now rail) in tunnel form.

Developing a holistic urban design policy

With the success of the Eastern Distributor, and a large road infrastructure program looming, there was a realization that urban design needed to be consistently applied on all projects.  The agency’s urban designers were tasked with developing an urban design policy.  Its aim was to orient the agency to the pursuit of urban design outcomes from investment in transport infrastructure in a total transport, urban development and environment context.  The broad model was urban design as public policy developed by the Urban Design Group of the New York City Planning Department as far back as the 1960’s and 70’s 4.  Introduction of the concept of urban design as public policy into a road agency in Australia, was an innovation.

The first step was to write a series of Urban Design Practice Notes, titled Beyond the Pavement 5. This was undertaken as a Roads and Traffic Authority research project, work-shopped across the agency over a few years and published in 1999.  It triggered a decade of unequaled urban design innovation in the agency, in which project teams began to think well beyond the narrow confines of a road right-of-way.

Hundreds of projects and billions of dollars of investment were guided by urban designers and built, in accordance with Beyond the Pavement principles.  New design-and-build urban design contracts, design briefs and methodologies were written. A suite of detailed design guidelines was built up addressing specific topics such as bridges, landscape, water-sensitive design, tunnels and noise walls. Urban design frameworks were written guiding, among others, the vital Hume and Pacific Highway upgrade projects covering over 1,000 km of corridor state-wide. Engineering and project management systems were reshaped to encompass urban design. Visual impact methodologies were developed and incorporated into environmental assessment processes. Urban design training was provided to hundreds of engineers, environmental advisors and project managers and opened to other agencies. A Register of Urban Designers was set up. Design Review Panels were created with the input of the New South Wales Government Architect.

After a decade of applying the principles contained in the practice notes, a new government document was created distilling all of this together with countless built examples into a formal policy: Beyond the Pavement – Urban design policy, procedures and principles, 2009. Urban design became a policy of the Roads and Traffic Authority to be followed by all project teams. This policy document received the Australia Award for Urban Design in 2010, a prestigious national award that had been previously set up by the Prime Minister Paul Keating, a champion of urban design.  It won for its approach and supporting body of a range of projects demonstrating the design principles in practice and is, arguably, unusual in its breadth and depth for a road agency anywhere 6.

Since 2009 it has gone through various updates as required of policy documents by the State government and necessitated by successive administrative changes.  The first major revision occurred when the Centre for Urban Design was established 7.  With the creation of the transport mega-agency there has been a recent re-write by the Centre titled: Beyond the Pavement 2020: Urban design approach and procedures for road and maritime infrastructure planning, design and construction.

Figure 4. The front cover shows a new state-of-art glass lift positioned within a designed precinct at Milsons Point facilitated by the Centre for Urban Design. It complements the adjacent old stairway and provides alternative easy pedestrian and bicycle access to the Sydney Harbour Bridge – a significant contribution to active transport through minimal means. This latest document update reflects the continuity and sustained development of an urban design approach applicable to all transport infrastructure in the State.

Beyond the Pavement gained much traction within the organization, other agencies and the planning, design and construction industries as the way forward.  It became a model for other transport agencies in Australia and the Pacific region.  Much can be extrapolated from this urban design policy and its practical application, at a level of principle.

Lessons from the Beyond the Pavement policy governing transport infrastructure

Make a commitment

There needs to be a commitment to urban design in the first instance at the highest level.  Urban design should not be a hit and miss situation or re-invented for each individual project.  An agency should require infrastructure to be planned and projects developed on a consistent basis using an urban design approach and within a whole-of-transport, urban structure and form and environmental context.  It should be clear what is meant by urban design, what is expected from staff responsible for or affecting infrastructure and the outcomes being sought.

 Have an opinion

Beyond the Pavement says that infrastructure must fit sensitively with the built, natural and community environment; that it must contribute to accessibility and connectivity and that it must contribute to the quality of the public domain and urban revitalization.  These are the stated outcomes desired by the agency and which have proved to be robust over a long period of time.

They emerge from the experience of the Eastern Distributor and subsequent workshops over an extended period that were held to develop the agency’s urban design approach.  A series of design principles, which are laid out in the document, are aimed at achieving the outcomes. They include such things as responding to landform, incorporating natural systems and ecology, responding to urban fabric, incorporating heritage and designing transport infrastructure as an experience in movement.

But in a way, it does not matter what the objectives or principles are. What matters is that an organization has an opinion and uses its intellectual resources to take a stance.

Make someone responsible

Responsibility for urban design needs to be pinpointed. There should be the equivalent of a Centre for Urban Design as a custodian of urban design policy and practice with responsibility for developing urban design and facilitating urban design outcomes from infrastructure projects. These people must be experienced designers. In turn, it is incumbent on an agency to make sure such a unit is integrated and functioning along with the project managers, planners, engineers, consultant urban designers and builders.  Process, facilitation and management of urban design are complex matters and influence the outcomes.

Facilitation means that an agency’s urban designers do not directly design projects; it would be impossible for a small in-house group to do so especially when the infrastructure program is large, state-wide and complex.   Their job is to consistently make urban design happen and ensure that good urban design outcomes result.  Project managers, in consultation with this dedicated team, need to incorporate private sector urban designers as equal members of their teams from inception to delivery of a project.

Have a process                            

Urban design will not happen unless it is integrated into the processes the organization adopts.  Facilitation of urban design best occurs through means such as the following:

1. Provide policy and technical advice on urban design preferably from a central, head office, level close to the executive.
2. Integrate urban design tasks and responsibilities into an organization’s project management process from inception and planning stages through to project delivery.
3. Use urban design consultants with transport, planning and infrastructure knowledge and experience thereby giving project managers at different stages of planning, design and construction direct access to urban design expertise, which should be integrated into the project team.
4. Build urban design requirements and selection criteria into tender processes.
5. Evaluate urban design outcomes from completed projects and feed the results back into policy, planning and design.
6. Encourage inclusive community and stakeholder consultation on urban design, from early in the process and not after the fact.
7. Carry out education and training to help an entire agency understand urban design.

The following diagram shows the cyclical process of activities adopted by the Centre for Urban Design to continuously develop and refine its policy.

Figure 6. Diagram depicting the urban design cycle adopted by the road agency, as represented in Beyond the Pavement.

 Provide helpful guidance for project teams

An over-arching urban design policy is an excellent foundation to set a direction for an agency to systematically produce good urban design outcomes, but is not necessarily sufficient.  Project managers, consultants and construction companies need more detailed guidelines to address specific aspects and elements of infrastructure projects.  This, in itself, is a continuing process involving research, guideline updates and new guideline development.  It must ensure that guidelines are applicable to a broad audience and ever evolving transport bureaucracy.  Urban design policy, it can be seen, does not stand alone but is only as relevant as its currency and effect in practice.  It is, inevitably, a work in progress 8.

Beyond the Pavement in practice

An emphasis on landscape

Landscape features strongly as a substantive dimension of Beyond the Pavement.  It is an integral part of what the Centre for Urban Design does, fundamental to urban design outcomes and not an add-on embellishment to infrastructure to make it look better.  Infrastructure itself constitutes a landscape.  Landscape is an amalgam of all influences and embraces landform, vegetation and ecology, settlements in the landscape, their built elements, industry, the farming and extraction of minerals and the man-made, often vast, infrastructures of power, water and transport.  It is the green environment we create in association with movement corridors and which integrates infrastructure with its settings, creates parkland, provides shade, humanizes our streets and contributes to the extent and quality of the public domain.  The green environment absorbs carbon emissions, sustains ecology and enhances the human experience. 9.   

Recognition and incorporation of heritage and cultural context

Heritage and cultural context must embrace Aboriginal values as part of urban design – a powerful move from which others can learn.  Beyond the Pavement strongly acknowledges Country and the Aboriginal peoples as the traditional owners of the land, and their unique understanding of the landscape. This supports United Nations objectives and brings a new appreciation of the nature of landscape, what needs to be protected, how it should be managed, and what should be celebrated or reflected in infrastructure design including associated artworks.  Designing with respect to Country requires participation with indigenous communities, on their own terms.  A number of guidelines, papers and conference reports have been written on this subject.  Julian Baggini writes that reverence to the past and present of other cultures could help us transform our own philosophies of landscapes; whereas the realm of western philosophy omits place, Aboriginal culture in Australia is one of the ‘non-Western’ cultures to embrace time and place simultaneously as part of their understanding of the land and landscape 10.

We need to be sensitive to:  Historic buildings in their setting; historic elements such as walls, monuments and bridges; sites and spaces; plantings of cultural importance and the experience of the landscape as part of the journey. “Preserving the Historic Road” has been a veritable movement in the USA recognizing that these routes take us through our landscapes and history.

Bridges in the landscape

The huge bridge task across the State involves many structural types and contexts.  Together with the expectation and potentials for design excellence it behooved the preparation of aesthetic guidelines for new bridges, bridge upgrades and duplications, and preservation and restoration of bridges having heritage importance. Bridges in their setting form a landscape, sometimes referred to as bridge-scape, and contribute to our sense of place.

Figure 7. The dramatic curved bridge by the Roads and Traffic Authority over the Woronora River has a pedestrian and cycle footbridge hung below the road deck. With the re-modelling of its foreshores as part of the urban design scope of works it fits in with the river, topography, ecology and sandstone and bushland character of Sutherland Shire County, to form a landscape whole.

There has been an increasing focus by the road agency on bridges for bicycles and pedestrians.  Such bridges support active transport and improve regional and local connections for commuting, schooling and recreation – a relevant part of the planning and design of human settlements.

Figure 8. Yandhai Bridge: This dramatic 200-metre single-span pedestrian and cycle bridge across the Nepean River connects the city of Penrith with Emu Plains at the base of the Blue Mountains. It opens the foreshores for public use and creates a popular walking loop. This supports Penrith as a “River City” consistent with the city’s master plan and strategy of the Greater Sydney Planning Commission.

Attention should be paid to opportunities for urban revitalization and improving the quality of the public domain under bridge viaducts. These spaces can often be hostile if not thought about.  Often, such spaces form part of the curtilage of the bridge to be protected.

Figure 9. Improvements under the M4 Motorway viaducts at North Strathfield in Sydney have turned an otherwise derelict area into a new space, Ismay Reserve, a neat revitalized space that is open, well-lit, safe, attractive and well-used by the community.

The refurbishment of the bays under the northern approach viaduct of the heritage-listed multi-modal Sydney Harbour Bridge, in the vicinity of Milsons Point station, has relocated some 300 Roads and Maritime staff from prime office space in North Sydney to state-owned property.  It transforms an under-utilized and obsolete piece of infrastructure and provides a state-of-art head office environment with green walls, heritage interpretation and Aboriginal artwork and is completely soundproofed from bridge traffic. Unusually for a head office this sits in a walkable, tree-lined village, Kirribilli, bringing more active café and commercial life into it. This is an excellent example of resource allocation, planning and urban design related to infrastructure.

 

From network and corridor frameworks to projects

It is wise to take a broad, holistic and strategic view in identifying the needs and opportunities and developing infrastructure.  This means taking into account regional contexts, environmental constraints, transport networks and patterns of movement, urban growth and settlement.  Network and corridor frameworks should be encouraged in an urban design policy.  Networks are a powerful way to structure areas and movement systems.

Urban design frameworks for a corridor can inform the individual projects and ensure a consistent and appropriate outcome for the corridor as a whole.  Two different examples are the Great Western Highway and the North Coast Pacific Highway.

Historically, the Great Western Highway has been a ‘life-line’ along the dramatic ridge of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.  An urban design framework was developed for its 53-km upgrade to a highway standard.  As well as being a key inter-regional highway it serves as the local traffic spine for many towns along its length. The framework defines the basic structure of the corridor as a pattern of villages and towns adjacent to or straddling the intertwined highway and railway, separated by bushland, as a ‘string of pearls’ whose integrity needs to be protected.  In accordance with this framework the highway has been completed, over a number of years as the funds became available, to make a cohesive whole within the Blue Mountains context.

Figure 12. Great Western Highway upgrade at Hazelbrook showing road and rail relationship with preservation of the historic railway station (far right), pedestrian connection and a new park (bottom left) creating an identifiable precinct that straddles the highway.

Figure 13. Great Western Highway through the town of Leura passes under a constructed land-bridge with ramps to the town. This enabled a continuous, safe, connection to be created between the two sides of the town, along the lateral ridge-line, previously severed by traffic and continues the line of the charming main street.

It is supported by a number of practical design strategies 11. Open community participation on each project from the inception has been a key to the overall success of the highway upgrade.

The North Coast Pacific Highway is an inter-capital infrastructure build along 700 kms of eastern seaboard, forming a critical link on the route between Sydney and Brisbane and defined by the Great Dividing Range, Pacific Ocean and the major rivers that flow between. It provides a safe journey and supports farming, urban growth and tourism. In order to arrive at the best transport solution and alignment the entire multi-modal network f the North Coast was examined in collaboration with the then state Department of Transport. Systematic community and stakeholder participation on a large scale was undertaken and informed the outcome. The road agency did the first environmental mapping of the whole North Coast. A corridor was selected for a dual carriageway highway and a strategic urban design framework eventually developed following a vision and using just a few key principles repeated along its entire length.

It has resulted in a unified highway, produced over a decade by the hands of urban designers and engineers and completed in 2020, but one which responds to different contexts and has special features that mark the journey. This massive upgrade project, recently completed, has won the Australia Institute of Architects (AILA) New South Wales 2021 Award for Landscape Architecture for Infrastructure as well as the Regional Achievement Award – making reference to the seamless integration of the highway into the landscape, the driver and passenger experience of the broader landscape, the technical research, environmental planning and engagement with local communities and Aboriginal knowledge holders.

Infrastructure for public transport (transit)

Traffic management in the state has traditionally focused on bus priority measures along arterial road corridors and at intersections.  However, two innovations are worth highlighting from an urban design perspective.  Dedicated bus transitways (T-ways) in the recently named ‘Western Parkland City’ of Sydney, with their distinctive station shelters and precincts, are aimed at bridging the gap between passenger rail and local buses in areas underserved by public transport; transitways are organized to create a design structure needed in the sprawling growth areas.  The recently completed B-line with its yellow double-deck buses linking Sydney’s major downtown with the Northern Beaches in its own way creates an imageable transit system along a busy corridor.  Each system offers alternative to the car and has a distinctive network identity. 12.

Provision and design of light rail in road corridors and dedicated rights-of-way is increasingly playing a public transport role albeit limited and, through urban design means, is helping transform urban space and revitalize places.

Figure 15. Recently opened light rail in the city of Newcastle in New South Wales, with associated public domain improvements, was built to help revitalize the city centre. The original heavy rail that severed the city from its waterfront was demolished. But even the light rail has some barriers.

An urban design approach to facilities and precincts for ferry wharfs and terminals at waterfront edges is contributing to transport identity, passenger experience, modal integration and improved quality of the public domain at these nodal points.

Figure 16. Wharf redevelopment at Milsons Point in Sydney Harbour alongside Luna Park showing the distinctive structural form of the wharf and careful physical and visual integration into its precinct. It has a modular structure which is repeated in other wharf locations to create a system identity.

Ferry services connect communities, serve commuters and support the tourist and leisure economy. They open up unbridled views of the harbour and its peninsulas making the city imageable. Landscape and visual impact assessment is an important part of the ferry upgrade design process.

The Centre for Urban Design has played an important facilitation and advisory role in the planning and design of the new metropolitan passenger rail network for Sydney especially in helping bring together traffic planners, engineers and urban designers on optimal station locations, bus and passenger interface and station precinct designs including station frontages on arterial roads. This area of urban design work has great potential.

It is worth drawing attention to the work by architect/engineers and other designers in the Station Design Office of the French National Railways.  This work is part of a national agenda to build multi-modal interchanges as transport hubs that can be a catalyst for urban development and redevelopment.  For example, the redesign and renovation of Saint Charles station in Marseilles besides being an impressive piece of architecture, is part of a larger urban conception; it stitches the station into the fabric of the city and furthermore provides a framework for the transformation of a vast area between the station on the hill and the port.  This is much more than over-station development to recoup metropolitan rail building costs, generate high rise towers and increase land values on and around station sites.  French station designs reinstate the ’grand station’ in contemporary terms.

 An urban design approach to metropolitan motorways

A large motorway program that complements the planned new metropolitan rail system has been underway in Sydney, albeit with much contention. Motorways provide a high order set of routes connecting the major parts of a geographically large, complex and topographically difficult metropolitan area and beyond in a way that rail cannot do, serve the industrial structure of the city and connect markets among other things.

There are highly successful sections of the completed motorway system.

Figure 17. The M7 Motorway in western Sydney was designed as an experience in movement. This view shows one of four approaches to the Light Horse Interchange with defining sculpture elements. A green setting is created for the architecturally designed motorway.

Regional cycleways are often built in tandem with a new motorway.

Figure 18. This 40km cycleway with natural bushland cover for much of its length was part of the scope of works for the M7 Motorway – a huge contrast in scale and environment. It has rest areas and interpretative artwork along its length.

The new extensions, which will complete an entire motorway network, are being designed and built underground. The urban design vision that governs it is one of a sustainable, high quality and transformational infrastructure for Sydney as a global city having a stimulating sense of subterranean movement.  It will help to build environments for communities and relieve road arterials for surface road-based public transport and urban revitalization – subject to political will.  Not least, it will provide more usable and attractive open space, add to the greening of the urban environment with all of its benefits, and contribute to the future livability of the city.

Figure 19. The disused rail yards at Rozelle are being converted into major parkland (over-laid) for the community as part of the “Westconnex” subterranean motorway scope. It continues the theme of greening the city on a large scale and is planned as a public domain for the communities lining its northern edge.

With a massive political commitment to motorways by consecutive governments urban designers are obliged to help turn them to maximum advantage for the city.

Key messages

For urban design to succeed three main considerations should be taken into account.  First, is that urban design only works if there is ‘corporate’ commitment of an agency or organization with a dedicated urban design team.  Second, urban design must be integrated throughout the process from planning through design to implementation with cooperative team work.  Finally, urban design requires continuous improvement with constant cycles of injecting the lessons of successful urban design in practice, back into the policy framework, to benefit the future and meet changing political, bureaucratic, environmental and community needs.

Transport is an important part of urban design – shaping cities, towns, regions and, potentially, mega-regions.  Urban design in turn can improve transport.  An engineering-centric approach to transport infrastructure and in particular roads is inadequate in addressing the quality of the built, natural and community environment now and in the future.  It is likely to be destructive of environments and communities and financially costly.  In contra-distinction, an urban design approach goes well outside transport efficiency to encompass the environment of which it is part and get the most out of infrastructure investment.  An urban design approach means a different way of doing infrastructure in which infrastructure investment is seen to be equally investment in cities, towns and regions. The results are demonstrably superior and socially responsible than would otherwise be the case.

Afterword

It is not claimed that all projects are completely successful or, for that matter, motorways have no impacts. The process is such that a lot happens outside the control of the urban designers as a result of political, bureaucratic, developer and time pressure together with engineering, traffic management, financial and even planning imperatives.  Urban designers often need to act in relation to decisions made by government that are beyond their control.  Public servants work with successive governments in the public interest and contend with many stakeholders and changing communities. They deal with reality and do their best under these circumstances with public benefit in mind.

Acknowledgements

Except for those in Figure 10 taken by the author, the photographs in this paper have been supplied from the private collection of Gareth Collins, Director, Centre for Urban Design, Transport for New South Wales and Fellow, Australian Institute of Landscape Architects who has in addition reviewed this paper especially from the point of view of substance and accuracy. The author however takes full responsibility for the views expressed and final last word.

Notes and References

1. The urban design practitioner, consultant and educator Jonathan Barnett has recently addressed the need for urban design at a new scale, the urban agglomeration. He writes about the imperative for “mega-regional” design, with a particular focus on the USA context, as follows: Barnett. J. (2020). Designing the Megaregion: Meeting Urban Challenges at a New Scale. Island Press. https://islandpress.org/books/designingmegaregions

2. This was achieved through a strategy of increasing the (city-bound directional) toll slightly over an extended concession period, a creative and workable financial solution.

3. The decision of the selection panel on the international design competition for building Sydney’s Art Gallery Modern on part of the Eastern Distributor land-bridge appears to have been taken mainly on architectural grounds outside of the city and broader landscape context and in contra-distinction to the approach of the motorway design team in building the land-bridge to benefit the city. This in the view of the author of this paper is testimony to interest groups, planners and architects thinking and operating in silos and within the narrow confines of briefs, in this case, a competition brief.

4. Barnett, J. (1974). Urban Design as Public Policy. New York: Architectural Record, a McGraw Hill Publication.

5. The Beyond the Pavement title was borrowed from a national workshop organized by the Maryland State Highway Administration and Maryland Department of Transport in 1998 which developed a number of key principles around the theme of integrating highway development with communities and the environment while maintaining traffic performance and which subsequently took practical shape under a Context Sensitive Design USA Federal Program with trials in five states in 2002.

6. The citation of the jury for the Australian Award for Urban Design 2010 read:
‘Beyond the Pavement’ is a leading-edge design policy developed by the Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales. It provides a valuable precedent and tool for all Australian States and Territories as an innovative guide to maximizing quality urban design – and confirms the significant role of traffic and civil engineers in the creation of good places. This far-reaching policy is valuable in many respects but most significantly because it addresses the frequently neglected holistic design context within which roads sit. The document articulates design problems and raises the design bar for both processes and principles, taking a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach to the planning and design of road infrastructure and its environs.’

7. Centre for Urban Design (CfUD). (2014). Beyond the Pavement: Urban design policy, procedures and design principles (update from 2010). Roads and Maritime Services, Transport for New South Wales, NSW Government (Australia). Pub.No/RMS18.890. (Note: 2018 update due to go to press).

8. The Centre for Urban Design, New South Wales Government (Australia), can be looked up on: http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/business-induistry/partners-suppliers/centre-for-urban-design/index.html. This contains publicly available information about the Centre and its publications.

9. When Gareth Collins became Director of the Centre for Urban Design, he gave the following inspiring address: Collins, G. P. (2016). The success of a city relies on its physical and visual connections to nature. Talk presented at UN World Day, Sydney, 2016. It should be noted that the over-arching urban design policy of the road agency emphasizes the importance of landscape and nature and highlights the tradition of landscape in the state’s road corridors. To this end a detailed guideline was produced on landscape design and maintenance aimed at improving the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of road corridor planting and seeding as part of greening road corridors. An associated guideline is on water-sensitive urban design relevant to transport infrastructure.

10. Baggini, J. (1988). How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy. Ganta Press.

11. Some of the design strategies for the Great Western Highway include: Lowering speed of traffic to reduce road footprint through towns; vertically separating carriageways and creating super-elevation to fit the landform; creating see-through barriers to allow panoramic views; vertically re-aligning railway to ensure highway continuity and connectivity of communities under; enhancing cultural plantings for town identity; designing individual frontages to retain property access and identity; using local materials; saving heritage; and, preserving as much natural vegetation as possible between towns within the control of the road agency and in collaboration with local government (urban spread into this vegetation has unfortunately continued to an undesirable degree).

12. Subsequent State governments have failed to recognize T-ways as a cost-effective way of prioritizing road space for public transport and creating green corridors, less destructive than light rail and extremely flexible unlike fixed rail.

KEY WORDS: Urban design policy; transport infrastructure.