3.2.3. Strategies for spatial proximity

It must be noted that although the illustration suggests ‘local jobs. It was clarified from the interviews with officials (James Mant) that it should interpreted as promoting local retail services and thus local jobs, and also while provisions for co-working spaces shall be provided in community hubs, it may still mean that people might move out of 20 minute neighbourhoods for job commutes. (Mant, 2020; Municipality of Melbourne, 2017; The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2019)

The official documents suggest that local scale of neighbourhoods represent an apt scale to meet the basic needs of citizens, promoting walkability and engagement in planning processes. A wide array of local services at walkable distance shall benefit not only minimise transport trips but also enable social cohesion.

In terms of planning, this 20-minute time distance is calculated from the research undertaken by the local administrations which concluded that people are comfortable to walk 10 minutes for a trip, thus in 20 minutes residents should be able to perform round trip to a service. In spatial terms, this 10-minute radius translates to a distance of 800m to local services. According to the city officials, this 20-minute walk is also supported by the research on obesity which suggests that at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise should be performed by an individual everyday and thus the name. (Shannon et al., 2019; Thrift et al., 2020)

The structural feature of the 20-minute neighbourhood are the ‘Neighbourhood Activity Centres’ (NAC) which are the co-location hubs and community anchor points for provision of retail services, community hubs, schools and also act as public transit hubs. These hubs are to be designed with relatively high density to justify the economics of service provision and be the focus of decision making on local assets. (Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria, 2018; Pisano, 2020; Pozoukidou & Chatziyiannaki, 2021; Streets Alive, 2020) (Refer figure 23) It is implicit that the role and function of every NAC varies based on its location, size and socio-economic context within the metropolitan region. In order to support range of activities, these NACs should be high density developments and should be mixed use.(Stanley & Stanley, 2014) To co-ordinate the localisation of services and urban functioned in the NAC and the neighbourhood units with respect to the densities to be created, a liveability matrix is created with the intention to guide the local councils. Accordingly, it is observed that the NAC should have minimum 25 dwellings per hectare to accommodate the selected services. Table 2 illustrates the important components of the Liveability matrix. (Badland et al., 2019)

3.2.3. Strategies for spatial proximity

The strategy for spatial management of Melbourne is job-focuses polycentric constellation and liveability of communities through 20-minute neighbourhoods. The former proposes creation of new six nationally significant employment clusters outside the

CBD and inner neighbourhoods. These clusters consist of , for example, university branches in ‘network’ with local research, private organisations (like hospitals) to enhance innovation among these clusters. (Dunn, 2016) These clusters are intended to work as a networked urban system working individually yet networked to each other. The system shall also help localise the jobs in the areas and are connected to 20-minute neighbourhoods through regional and Neighbourhood activity centres. Thus, a hierarchy of Activity centres is observed as a strategy to localise specialised higher order services and local daily need services respectively, connected by multi-modal public transit. The proposed Principal Public Transport Network (PPTN) shall connect these national and regional activity centres while not all NACs, especially in low density suburbs can be connected due to economic viability. Thus, use of flexible transit service is proposed until required densities are achieved. These NACS shall further be connected to neighbourhoods and other areas through slow mobility options like biking and walking. (Khor et al., 2017)

Transport interventions for communities are defined as a key to delivery of 20-minute walkable neighbourhoods. The communities are engaged in identification of local features (opportunities and threats) of the neighbourhood especially walkable and bikeable access routes to NACs and local schools which are expected to improve wider mobility improvements among communities. Time based policies are activated for street calming on weekends and during school times. For example, creating no car zones during the school hours. (DELWP, 2019; Rochecouste et al., 2020; The State of Victoria- Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2019b, 2019a) As mentioned before, building density and diversity (henceforth expressed as intensification) are the pre-requisites to enable provision of services in the NACs. While Land use takes time to change, public transport is defined as an important lever for accelerating accessibility to services. For the PPTN extension in sprawled outer areas of the city, its important to create high mixed use density zones near NACs, while paying equal attention to quality of housing which might be jeopardised due to rapid development.(The State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, 2017) The Plan seeks to increase the concentration of population, activities within the network of these activity centres (Refer figure 24) The creation of priority plan for National Innovation clusters development and the three pilot projects undertaken to check delivery of 20-minute neighbourhoods suggest that the future intensification is focused on the middle suburbs to tie together built-form, transit and land-use strategies as co-functioning parts of an integrated urban constellation converging into inner city. The three pilot projects (refer figure 25, 26 & 27) were focussed mostly creating pedestrian environment and urban design elements to streets with the help of communities. These urban design elements included uplifting facades of retail spaces, pedestrianizing the transit nodes, and painting the local dilapidated areas through street beautification.