schools,educational institutions and transport
Andrew Inglis
I am sending from melbourne Australia, our desnity is about 16 persons
per hectare, and only rising slowly. our cities are much more
american-style 'tract' housing by character, with planning
stilldominanted by cluster and linear culde-sacs for all byt very
recent communities. Schools are integrated intoplanning processe but
public transport is still vey bus and oil (somegas) dependent. these
could be readily substituted with electric buses , but our electricity
remains substantialy brown coal fired with very hifghg carbon
footprints. we have some 'walking" buses whereby communities per
parents guardians etc are encouraged to walk with primary school
students to encourage both health, community and learning of road
safety.
Imy past i (I schooled in the 1960's and 70's) i waalong with 3
brothers to alocal primary (600m) and walked 1.5km then trained 3km
then walked another 500m to get to hiugh school and a similar return
journey. That was before car ownership became the dominant mode.
present public transport patronage here is only climbing slowly and is
much affected by zone pricing and very strong influence of road and
road transport lobby.
I would add other institutions into the mix (I teach at a TAFE (sort
of polytechnical) and some (& staff) students travel upwards of 40km
by train (1 way ) or commute by car up to 120 km (1 way only !!) 3 or
4 times weekly. An added problem is special schools for intellectually
or emotionally or otherwise special needs/ challenged children.
in addition the suburban trainetwrok acts a defacto social and soft
drug corridor, which combined with mobile phone and ineternet
technology in a wealthy society makes for very difficult problems to
eradicate. Students are often tired (or "stoned" or worse)
Cycle paths are still ajoke here and getting grade separation seems
intractable to our brand of cowardly politicians. I have seen it dealt
with admirably (firsthand) in Vancouver BC and Munich so feel here
'twill only change with stronger communities (aka Jenks & Dempsey
"Future Forms and Design for Sustainable Cities").Peter Newman , now
at Murdoch University has been highlighting aspects of this since he
first got 'gren ' politized as councillor at Fremantle WA in the early
1980's. Sensitive Density and Community development are needed to
avoid ending up with gated communities and gross urban fear.
Inglis