Fishermans Bend a mini city: messy, chaotic and will probably drive some people around the bend

Fishermans Bend planning is a reflection of planning in the modern era. Chaotic, influenced by many interests and non-linear, which are ironically the elements that people love in a city...

It was serendipitous that I was at the University of Melbourne this morning and saw the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning have an exhibition on covering the previous Fishermans Bend Planning documents.

A few things struck me:

• The plans are very 'top-down'.
• Plans are regimented and ordered but the streets looked well scaled.
• The transport network (rail I assume) is really integrated into the development (TODs). See below:

More thoughts:

• The idea of a civic centre or Place is very formal and constructed in a way that presents a single centre for 'community'...
• There is a clear separation between what you do on a day-to-day basis. See plan:

Planning still inherently includes this construct (consciously and subconsciously) but it is definitely a far messy process which requires leadership.

The University of #Melbourne is leading the way at Fishermans Bend

It is for this reason, that we are immensely proud of our role on the campus design team, where we worked with the team led by @grimshaws to develop a masterplan for the University of Melbourne's new campus for Fishermans Bend.

This is an exciting project to be a part of and one that the University of Melbourne are showing clear leadership in as part of the city that is ripe with opportunity but not without risks.

Our advice to the team included how best to align with the transport masterplan and how to best configure the site functionally.

A personal highlight was a tour of the Holden factory which included this gem, a 'world record' beating Barina...the 70s were so cool.

#cities #fishermansbend #planning #transport