The council of Canterbury Bankstown in Sydney’s west is staging a future street demonstration to show how smart technology interacts with landscape and design.
The future street, in the plaza between North Terrace and Bankstown station, has a display of Wi-Fi equipped smart benches, solar powered bins, e-scooters and e-bikes on display.
Planning and design firm Place Design Group was appointed by the council to deliver the installation. It is based on a future street concept that Place Design has developed in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and the Smart Cities Council ANZ.
Place Design’s director of planning, Chris Isles said the project demonstrated how councils could engage the local community to interact with smart city strategies in a fun and effective way.
Place Design’s provocative smart street publication
Place Design chose the event to launch the second edition of its ‘Future of Streets’ publication, which it describes as a “provocation book [that] has upped the anti (sic) on thought-provoking ideas, future-focused concepts and key design principles focused on the future of our streets.” It is available free here.
According to Place Designs, the city street is “an overlooked city asset … [that] has much potential and is the hot topic of the moment as councils and government start to seriously discuss the smart cities agenda and look to implement smart cities strategies.”
Isles said the new edition was “a further exploration about the future of streets, documenting emerging issues and the current influences, change and disruption occurring in, on, under and about our streets.”
“The content within, really focuses on the topical issues our streets are facing including micro-mobility (e-scooters and dockless bikes), freight and logistics (urban freight and food delivery), autonomous vehicles and 5G in our cities,” he said.
“The design principles within are a clear, concise, actionable list of considerations for councils and government bodies, when planning their smart city, future-focused strategies.
Canterbury-Bankstown Future Street runs from June 18 – 24.
