streets ahead
At the Vic Park Collective, we love public spaces!
There is no fee to enjoy public spaces, and that's where the good stuff happens: people meet and connect, small and diverse businesses thrive, there may be entertainment or just good old people watching.
One of the best "eat streets" in Perth, Albany Highway is the lifeblood of the Vic Park community. It has achieved this status despite ordinary public spaces (streets and open spaces) relative to other great urban centres around the world.
Imagine how amazing Albany Highway could be if it had better public spaces for the entire community to come together and for businesses to trade more strongly?
We have prepared an Action Plan for Albany Highway Vic Park and East Vic Park. The Streets Ahead Action Plan for is now available to view.
Input from local residents, traders, council officers and councillors was invaluable in preparing the Action Plan. A summary of all community feedback received is now available to view. We designed a series of events to get people involved as follows:
Workshops
We offered two (a Vic Park and East Vic Park focused) fun and interactive workshops to explore how to best utilise public spaces on Albany Highway in Vic Park. We used some amazing tactile models from the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (pictured) to experiment and co-design improvements to public spaces in the area.
These workshops were held on Sunday 18 November at LJ Hooker Offices (Vic Park focused) and Sunday 25 November at Jewel of the Park, (East Vic Park focused).
A detailed summary of the co-design outcomes from the workshops can be found below.
Collective Conversations
On Wednesday 24th October 2018 we held a Collective Conversation on Streets Ahead with the theme "better public spaces for stronger communities". Locals joined us for an inspirational discussion about how public spaces can transform a town and make communities and businesses stronger. We invited speakers Adrian Caragna from Roberts Day consultancy, Dean Cracknell from Town Team Movement and Dr Anthony Duckworth-Smith from the Australian Urban Design Research Centre.
You can read the blog post here.
Jane's Walk - Interactive Walking Tours
In collaboration with Jane's Walk Perth we held two interactive walking tours of Albany Highway - one in East Vic Park on Saturday 17th October and another on the 10th of November covering Victoria Park. We checked out the public spaces around Albany Highway. We saw life through the lens of the diverse locals, met business owners and asked you to help us rate the space. For East Victoria Park we started at the Isaia Corner (jelly bean roundabout) and finished at Green Bunch for coffee. For Victoria Park we started at the Vic Park Post Office and finished at DTC for a drink.
You can read the Vic Park and East Vic Park booklets below.