Individual Project One Statement

After investigating the opportunities of a car free urban environment, I thought it was necessary to think about how goods and services could get in and out of these areas. It is clear that removing car clogged streets from an urban neighbourhood would provide great benefits to its residents and improve the space around buildings for new activities and more efficient transportation systems. However, one of the great challenges the city would face in this scenario is how to allow for service and delivery vehicles to get to where they’re needed in order to sustain inner-city business and lifestyles.

One of the possibilities I have thought of would involve a central docking facility that would be designed to cater for trucks and courier vehicles unloading goods in an efficient manner. Goods would be loaded onto automated transport units that carry the goods to shops, businesses, and homes located inside the car free zone via the pods network. The central docking facility could also be located adjacent to freeways or high capacity roads (such as the riverside express way) improving the efficiency of goods transport, both helping business and allowing transport vehicles to avoid travelling to numerous locations within one district via congested roads.

Another possibility would be a response to the increasing densities in the inner city. In a future car free CBD the shortage of land would only push new developments to go higher and higher. If new developments were able to cater for residents to live, work, and shop in very close proximity (ie within the same building or complex), pressure on transport services would be greatly reduced. Since Brisbane has a relatively small population by world standards and has no real need for a super structure such as a vertical city, a smaller more adaptable style of building would be more suited. What if a new type of structure allowed for both residential and commercial sectors which were able to grow and evolve according to changing economic/social conditions over time? In a sense this building/complex would be able to adapt and expand like an emerging town/village within an urban environment.