I’m procrastinating about a fee proposal, so have a blog post instead;
I live in the inner city. I walk or ride a tricycle (my own) to do the local market and supermarket shopping (truthfully, my husband mostly does it). I also ride the Food Know How tricycle between local cafes and the Collingwood Children’s Farm. My daughter walks the 100m to school. I can ride my bicycle to get almost anywhere and, around here, people of every socio-economic group can be seen riding their bicycles because that’s one of the easiest ways to get around. When I’m feeling lazy and don’t feel like cycling I take the tram or the train into the city.
I live in a place where public transport, walking and cycling is easy (just as well, I’ll be car free in two weeks), and I have a very different view of life from people who live in places where the cars go fast and the distances to supermarkets, libraries and sports facilities are longer.
In my head, gyms, swimming pools and basketball courts serve locals who can walk or cycle there. Schools, libraries and child care centres similarly. Aged Care facilities should be staffed by locals. Obviously, you would keep disabled parking spaces but how do you provide for people who don’t have disabled parking permits, but still need to use a car as a motorised mobility device? People like me when I was 7 months pregnant, or when I tore my calf muscle playing netball. I’ll keep thinking about that…
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that it’s probably wrong of me to look at every project I work on and ask, “do we really need to include car parking?” and “What would we have to do to make that happen?” I still do it though and then remind myself of my transport privilege and prejudice.
I will say though, that the child care centre in the heart of the City of Yarra (highest proportion of people who cycle to work in Australia) is a possible exception. I found it difficult to believe that the centre needed parking for so many cars – imagine how much more play space they could have had? I certainly argued for generous bike parking, to accommodate all the ways people are carry children on their bikes these days. And now, every time I walk past the site, I imagine working with the enrolling families to make sure that they don’t drive to get there – one way to deal with long waiting lists :-).
What prejudices do you bring to your sustainability problem solving?