The Built Environment Indicators

Today the Movement and Place website launched. One of the most exciting features for me was the public-facing Built Environment Indicators that are now available for exploration. These indicators emerged out of long-standing work by Government Architect NSW (and deserve a special shout-out to Marissa Looby and Alicia Pozniak, among others) to develop a series of public and government datasets that could assist designers in baselining qualities of places in order to focus efforts for improvement and, ultimately, measure success in terms of positive change in various domains as a result of the project, and no negative change in any other domain.

The significance of these being 'built environment indicators' was that they aim to represent all aspects of the place, irrespective of the agent or agency at work here - so for example a transport planner might be able to see not only how improvements to transport outcomes result from a project, but also baseline other agency considerations like local centre access (daily needs, and mix of uses), tree canopy, or public school access, before engaging with DPIE, EES or DET.

The indicators covered a range of factors that were within a project control and where data was available to support those indicators, ranging from slope and street enclosure, to complex datasets like a hybridised maps of cycle segregation and traffic speed that would contribute to cycling attractiveness. However, the intent was, as much as possible, that each indicator would represent a set of one or two facts - such as the existence of a cycle path or road speed, and that complex qualities like "walkability" would be understood through the aggregation of these indicators, such as pedestrian space + tree canopy + mix of uses + traffic speed, which could be added to or sophisticated over time.

The Built Environment Indicators were refined with input of a cross-agency working group to the set above in 2020, representing the themes (darker shades) and user experiences (lighter shades) which were most relevant to major projects and their interface with places. Each indicator represented a dataset that was available for visualising that place in Greater Sydney or NSW. These datasets could be rolled up into a domain (such as 'local opportunities') or theme ('access and connection') to understand broadly what the challenges were in a given area - for example an area with poor tree canopy may focus on increasing tree canopy to deliver the Premier's Priority, but equally an area with little Green and Blue infrastructure generally should focus on delivering any infrastructure - whether it be green cover or tree canopy - as a priority. Trade-offs might be understood in this context as well - tree canopy that becomes green cover in such an area being preferable to tree canopy traded for more grey infrastructure.

GANSW developed a proof of concept for mapping these indicators and the combined themes (illustrated above) with Superspace, in 2020. As a result we could, for the first time, visualise and interrogate the performance of places across broad areas and also down to individual streets. Turning this proof of concept into a public-facing online portal was no easy feat, however, and another six month program was required, led by TfNSW, to develop the data sheets and then online maps that now enable this information to be publicly accessed and used on projects going forward.

Here are five of my favourite maps, and how they may change practice in the future:

Mode Share - we often craft visions of how people will move about our places. Do we envisage a cycling nirvana, or a place where everyone get the metro to work? Key to understanding this is a comparison of our aspiration with existing places with that quality. Another challenge is the degree to which movement is fluid, influenced by the attractiveness of other options. Now we can translate our ambitions into a desired sustainable mode share (allowing fluidity between cycling, walking and public transport), and identify similar SA1s to our vision and interrogate them. How many stops and stations do they have, how many cycleways - where are their key destinations and housing, relative to each other. We can also now monitor whether we are achieving this ambition over time.

Urban Heat - Climate change adaptation is a key challenge for our built environment, spanning from how and what we build, to how our built environment reacts when a shock or stress occurs. Heatwaves are a particular challenge for Australia into the future, exacerbated by the urban heat island effect. Understanding urban heat at a fine grain enables us to focus our efforts on areas requiring the most improvement, and enables us to identify where we have been most successful at mitigating the urban heat island effect.

Walkable Access to Primary Schools - given the importance of active routes to schools for the health of students (as well as parents and teachers) and sustainable transport choices, this map enables us to understand the areas that are within a walking distance and highlights the key streets that form the 'primary pedestrian network' (to use a Victorian term) that feeds that school. There are a number of uses for this map, ranging from identifying areas suitable for initiatives like walking buses, through to planning safe infrastructure for children to cross where a walking route intersects with a busy street. In future it could be used as a planning tool for new schools to maximise their walkable catchment.

Street Legibility, or 'space syntax' of streets analyses streets against the basics of human navigation - the streets you would you naturally choose to use in a network to get around, because they are the most direct, with good view lines and linkages to many places. Many of these are our main roads, with good reason - following the same ridges and contours that people may have walked for thousands of years. These are the streets where it is often the most logical (topography permitting) for people to walk, cycle or move by bus - where we need to be placing our efforts. Sometimes, when these routes are not our main roads, this offers us a first pass of potential win-wins - routes that does not require displacement of cars, where healthy modes like cycling might be more easily or quickly rolled out.

Street Space for Pedestrians - Now this isn't the most intuitive map, but it represents the proportion of space available for other uses than driving (ie pedestrian, cyclists, landscaping and parking) calculated by subtracting from the right-of-way (ROW) the predicted amount of room required based on the classification of the road. So, for example, a local road is assumed to be bidirectional with a carriageway of 7m (2 x 3.5m lanes), and this sits within a 20m ROW, there is 13m (65%) of space available for pedestrians or other uses. Frequently there is far less space allocated - with parking lanes, wide legacy roads and other decisions that historically set the kerb location influencing the actual pedestrian offer. Nevertheless, this indicator provides us with a starting point for discussion - if we were to recreate the road, how much space could be allocated away from cars, while retaining its current function? How much is allocated now, and how much will there be in the future? Surely a better anchoring point than against how much space happens to be asphalt, or concrete.