Grey to Green - City of Melbourne

Type of project

Local Government Initiative

State

Victoria

Location

Urban

The City of Melbourne’s Grey to Green program is a compelling example of a long-term strategic and incremental approach to repurposing a local government area to meet the changing needs of its population. By identifying and reconfiguring land owned or managed by Council, including surplus road space, car parks, slip lanes and maintenance depots, the City of Melbourne (City) has converted more than 80 hectares of underutilised public space into high quality, diverse and accessible pedestrian space and parkland.

Encouraging healthy lifestyles

Over a 35-year period (between 1985-2020), the City has focused on adding extra greening, vibrancy and social transaction to its public realm at multiple locations across the municipality. In doing this, the City has sought to avoid the significant and prohibitive costs of central city land acquisitions.

Initially established as a means to encourage people into the central city, the _Grey to Green_ program has developed and evolved, proving crucial in accommodating significant increases in both the City’s population and density, at a notably low cost.

The _Grey to Green_ program is a design framework and philosophy that encourages healthy lifestyles by promoting active modes of transport, prioritising people over cars and encouraging environmentally sustainable approaches to city design and management. The program works with a number of Council goals and strategies and is realised through the implementation of wide-ranging public open space projects across the City. Key to these projects are the following design features:

1. Public Open Space
_Grey to Green_ projects come in all shapes and sizes and with varying features, creating functionally diverse and locally relevant open spaces within walking distance of city workers and residents. Examples of these include:

• Roads converted into open space and parks (Errol Street and Neill Street)
• Widened footpaths, improved medians and tree planting (Swanston Street, Southbank Boulevard and Lygon Street)
• Redundant infrastructure turned into public open space (Fitzroy Gardens Depot, Birrarung Marr and Federation Square)
• Removed slip lanes used to create and extend parks (Russell Street and Victoria Street)
• Car parking transformed into parks (Drummond Street and Wellington Parade South).

Featured within these spaces are elements that directly contribute to the recreational, physical and social needs of Melbourne’s diverse population. These include local and neighbourhood play spaces which promote exercise for all ages; the provision of barbeques and picnic tables, such as those at Hawke and Adderley Streets Park (which facilitate communities coming together); and sports facilities, such as those at the Neil Street Reserve (which simultaneously facilitate social connections and recreation). 

2\. Sense of Place
 
The process of City transformation through the _Grey to Green_ program is evidence-based and design-led, ensuring new spaces are integrated with the existing public realm through high-quality design. Local character has been established through the use of bluestone paving, Council-designed street furniture and street lighting, water sensitive urban design, tree planting and integrated public art. In this way, _Grey to Green_ projects appear as though they have always been a part of the City’s public realm. They are, in many cases, subtle and small-scale, helping knit the City together in a well-choreographed expression of civic pride. On both a city scale and local scale, this approach has helped to build and maintain a sense of place and character which Melbourne is known for.
 
To implement the _Grey to Green_ program, an Urban Design subcommittee was established. This subcommittee vetted all public space proposals going forward to Council for funding consideration. Only those that aligned with the program’s principles were supported. This process inspired a culture of change within the Council and a co-ordinated approach across the organisation. Public and political support was fostered by the incremental nature of the _Grey to Green_ program. The program commenced with the successful completion of smaller, less ‘controversial’ projects, such as the transformation of slip lanes. These projects demonstrated the benefits of the approach before larger projects were initiated and, in this way, trust and confidence in the Council’s approach was built over time.
 
Public participation is central to the ongoing success of _Grey to Green_, and has been refined over time, evolving from Town Hall meetings to a broader contemporary approach, including letters, advertising and digital media channels. While there was no public consultation on the formation of the ‘program’ itself, projects within the program may undergo several rounds of engagement, including meetings with residents and local businesses. This helps to facilitate exemplary outcomes by informing an understating of the community’s needs and instilling them in the designed solutions.

While there has been no formal evaluation of the _Grey to Green_ program, data captured in the 2015 ‘Places for People’ study demonstrates the program’s success and the ways it addresses Healthy Active by Design principles. This ongoing periodic study documents the consistent increases in public space in the Melbourne municipality between 1985 and 2010, with an increase from 27 to 85 hectares over this time. While a portion of this growth (11 hectares) is due to changes in municipal boundaries over time, the City has gained significant additional publicly accessible spaces by extending footpaths and establishing new public places. In the last decade (between 2010 and 2020), significant public space has been reclaimed by Council. These changes will be similarly captured in upcoming _Places for People_ studies.
 
With growing density in many cities worldwide, the need to find increased open space is ongoing. The cost of purchasing this space is often beyond a local government’s means. As such, the incremental approach of ‘_Grey to Green’_ is perfectly placed to address this. Through evaluating the vision and the results of the City’s _Grey to Green_ program, other local councils, governments or consultants can use a similar methodology to either preserve or regain public open space and its benefits.
 
Cross-disciplinary collaboration and co-ordination have been central to the success of this approach. Through involving the expertise of open space planners, landscape architects, urban designers, traffic engineers and the public, the program is a well-regarded model for ‘good planning’ that promotes socially responsible urban design.

Project team

City of Melbourne

Project Cost

As projects within the _Grey to Green_ program have been individually budgeted over 35 years, a total program cost cannot be easily provided. To demonstrate the cumulative value of this work however, Council’s _Open Space Strategy _estimated that $700 million would be needed for land acquisitions to meet the Strategy’s aims. Through _Grey to Green_, only $1 million has been spent on purchasing land over the life of the program. As such, _Grey to Green_ is an innovative, cost-effective and environmentally friendly model that is replicable and scalable.