Holly KirkNov 29, 2022

New OA science hot off the press!📢

Lead by @thamicroeser from RMIT's ICON Science, here's a novel, interdisciplinary assessment of the potential urban biodiversity & sustainability gains when we convert street parking into spaces for people & nature.
🚗🚙 ➡️ 🌿🐝🐦💧🧍
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42949-022-00073-x

Finding space for nature in cities: the considerable potential of redundant car parking - npj Urban Sustainability

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are recognised as a means to address challenges such as heatwaves, flooding and biodiversity loss. Delivering these benefits at scale will require large areas of scarce urban land to be converted into green space. Here we show an approach by which cities can make substantial progress towards their sustainability targets using NBS, by converting redundant street parking into biodiverse green space. We demonstrate that up to half of street parking in our case study municipality (The City of Melbourne) could be accommodated in garages within 200 m, freeing up large areas for greening. Our modelling projects significant benefits in terms of tree canopy over, stormwater and ecological connectivity. These would represent strong progress towards a number of the city’s ambitious NBS targets. As many cities allocate extensive areas to both street parking and off-street garages, this approach to freeing up space for nature in cities is widely applicable.

Nature
Show threadHolly KirkNov 30, 2022

This work combined #urbanplanning skills to reallocate parking spaces across the City of Melbourne.

We then used Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design #BSUD to create a series of modular designs that could be chosen, depending on the street parking context

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/push-to-convert-thousands-of-cbd-parking-spots-into-green-space-20221129-p5c265.html

Push to convert thousands of CBD parking spots into green space

Researchers say replacing asphalt with trees would bring people back to the city and kick-start its post-COVID recovery.

The Age
Show threadHolly KirkNov 30, 2022

We used #urbanEcology, #bsud & #wsud principles to create these models, all of which contained a few key elements:

-at least one native tree
- other habitat resources
- a sunken raingarden
- removal of paving

ericaNov 30, 2022
Show threadHolly Kirk

“Three ecologists, an architect, an urban forester, a water engineer, two geographers and a planner walk into a bar…”

This was a really fun project to work on, but also highlights the complexity of integrating #naturebasedsolutions into #urbanPlanning!

https://sustainabilitycommunity.springernature.com/posts/de-paving-paradise-one-parking-space-at-a-time?utm_source=like_mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=notify_author_of_like

De-paving paradise, one parking space at a time

Finding space for urban greening is as difficult as it is urgent. However, one area where we have been very generous with space in cities is car parking. This study shows that if we can use car parking space more efficiently, we can free up large areas for urban nature.

Springer Nature
Nov 30, 2022 at 1:28amWeb
Show threadHolly KirkNov 30, 2022

And I think we can all agree - visualising the changes we could make to a real street in Melbourne looks pretty blummin' good!!

#urbanNature
#urbanPlanning
#natureBasedSolutions
#theFutureOfCities

Show threadLiz IrvinNov 30, 2022
@DrHollyKirk I love it so much! So great to see multiple disciplines come together to achieve this sort of vision.
Show threadHolly KirkNov 30, 2022
@VeLizipede
Ah, thanks Liz! It's great to have the opportunity to work through all pieces of a puzzle as a team!
Show threadAnnaParadoxNov 30, 2022
@DrHollyKirk Thank you for sharing this article! The photo of the re-greened street is beautiful and the amount of land available by consolidating parking is surprising. Credible studies like this give me hope.