Greening the Greyfields
Sustainable & Resilient Urban Environments
Research
This project is developing tools to apply spatial information to urban planning decision-making, for improved economic, social and environmental outcomes.
The project is informing urban planning decisions related to the redevelopment of the middle suburbs, in particular those precincts characterised as ‘Greyfields’ which provide unique considerations for planning, such as:
-
existing community and social structures and networks not found in Greenfields or Brownfields
-
the predominant private ownership of ageing building stock
-
the need for upgrading civil and social infrastructure within the existing system
"Greyfields" are those ageing but occupied tracts of inner and middle ring suburbia that are physically, technologically and environmentally failing and which represent under-capitalised real estate assets" (Newton, 2010)
Project Stages & Expected Outcomes
The main outcomes should integrate a new set of strategies for urban development and urban planning, and a set of tools for spatial assessment and visualisation, for control and application of spatial information towards precinct redevelopment.
Module 1 – Assessment of economic state for urban regeneration considering the spatial dynamics of Australian and New Zealand cities (CRC-SI Project 4.51).
Module 2 – Development and analysis of spatial datasets and parameters determinant for housing redevelopment in Australian and New Zealand mid suburban areas, while integrating them into a demonstrator spatial decision support toolset (CRC-SI Project 4.51).
Module 3 – Development of Module 2 incorporating 3D visualisation into the planning toolset, allowing various building typologies to be envisioned and examined in, previously identified, redevelopment areas. Moreover, this stage should produce an assessment framework within the toolset to evaluate environmental, social and economic performance of the various options of redevelopment design.
Module 4 – Application and trial of Envision and ESP toolsets in community settings, to identify potential blockages to the usage of spatial data in urban development, and guarantee that the project outcomes are promptly applicable and integrated with current policy and governance structures.
The entire outcome package will integrate the report of potential urban planning and design options for mid suburban redevelopment, and how to deliver such programs. The applicability of measures will be validated in collaboration with CRCSI team to enable the functioning of the spatial platform and demonstrate its utility for economic, social and environmental enhancement in Greyfields redevelopment projects.
Research Questions <Module 3>
(1) What precinct scale development assessment tools currently exist, and, cumulatively, which of their features should be incorporated in the formulation of an industry standard and best practice?
(2) What functionality is required of a 3D design and assessment planning toolset for effective use in supporting stakeholder decisions in precinct redevelopment options?
(3) What are the relevant planning-related parameters to model for an interactive redevelopment tool and what are their implications?
(4) How is land value impacted by various redevelopment scenarios, and what does this mean for funding infrastructure and developer contributions?
(5) How are benefits and costs of a particular Greyfield precinct project, assessed and represented?
(6) How can the outputs of Mod.2 be effectively integrated with visualisation tools of Mod.3? Different visualisation platforms will have different capabilities in terms of managing large datasets present in Mod.2.
Research Questions <Module 4>
(1) How previously developed and assembled tools will perform in stakeholder engagement events with planners, developers, and community groups?
(2) How to we conjugate community development and public engagement methodologies with top-down planning approaches to get better consented planning outcomes?
(3) What innovative activities or technologies are available or could be developed to assess community input and capture the process of engagement for documenting and reporting outcomes?
(4) What institutional and policy limitations may delay the wide-spread usage of spatial planning tools to support sustainable urban regeneration? In Australia and New Zealand?