jet-ski wrote:um, ped links? last time I checked (yesterday) it was very easy to walk down there? cycle infrastructure in the city could be improved for sure but it's not hard to ride there either (though I don't mind riding down St George's Tce, so I'm not the type of cyclist the infrastructure is aimed at anyway).
I don't mean literal paths. Although on that note they are sub-standard in many sections anyway making the pedestrian, who should be 'king' in a dense urban environment, feel like a second class citizen. Look at the signs and poles that litter streetscape along the bottom section of
William St for example. Pedestrians have to duck and weave through a obstacle course of barriers while not being run down by footpath cyclists.
I was actually talking about visual and activity links from the city to the foreshore. Currently it's like they are two different places, not enough people are drawn to the foreshore area (this includes the grassed expanses and also the literal foreshore.. which is nothing but a retaining wall and the occasional tree). A tourist getting off the train in Perth CBD would have no idea that there is a large open space and foreshore just 5 minutes walk away.. there's simply nothing to draw them to that area. Where if you look at other cities the foreshore is the central focus. Even if you have no orientation you will end up along the foreshore as that is where most of the action is and where all the paths lead to. Look at places like Melbourne, Singapore etc for an example. Look at where the majority of activities, festivals etc are located.
The foreshore dev proposed is doing exactly that - developing some and leaving some.
Whether it is the most effective use of space is to be questioned, they leave a lot of large areas with nothing. I am not suggested to put high rise sky scrapers along the whole foreshore area. But I am urging people to be a little bit imaginative about what we could use that space for whilst also retaining key large open areas for the existing positive uses as you mentioned previously. Some of the ideas proposed in the 'What If?' project were quite good. My company actually made a submission, but it was the design/landscape architects who did it, not the planning crew.
I would (as always) question the wisdom of overcapitalising on the banks of a river. There are two ways the Swan could go. It could flood (and it has flooded that area before), or it could turn into a stinking cesspool. More urban development on the banks is not going to help avoid the stinking cesspool scenario because if anything it will increase contaminated runoff.
+1 With any development, especially along a river foreshore and reclaimed land we have to be extremely careful with it. Poor research and design can and will result in gigantic, expensive stuff ups.