Designing For People
When designing public spaces, people come first and foremost. Whether designing a road, a street, an intersection or a park, designers should consider the needs of people. This appears on the surface to be a simple an obvious statement, but for too long designers have been designing for the needs of machines, namely motor cars. Granted, motor cars generally contain people and of course all road user needs have to be incorporated within the design process.
Noosa has adopted a circle of design policy that begins with designing for the needs of the most vulnerable users first, pedestrians, and then progressively incorporates the needs of cyclists, scooter and motorcycle riders, public transport users, freight and then motor vehicles. Several iterations may need to be completed to balance the needs of all users.
The Shared Space Concept is also held in high regard. This design philosophy is particularly useful when designing for competing needs in high volume mixed pedestrian and motor vehicle areas such as Hastings Street. The Hastings Street project due for completion in 2008 includes five wide Shared Zones for improved pedestrian safety and amenity replacing two previous zebra crossings.
In pursuing Noosa's vision and targets for modal change it is important that public spaces not only function well but are also visually attractive places where people would like to be or travel through with an emphasis on leaving the car at home and making better use of more environmentally friendly forms of transport.
Achieving such outcomes is often easier said than done as many professional designers are skilled in traditional techniques such as highway design. There is a clear role in urban areas such as Noosa for the multi disciplinary professional or the public realm planner and designer. This is a role which Noosa has been working towards for the past few years with a strong change in emphasis away from the over design of highway design techniques to the humanistic design elements of the public realm.
