Jan Gehl in Hobart

Jan Gehl the well known Danish architect and the guru for making cities for people was in Hobart recently to give his assessment on Hobart's city centre. Very simple make the pedestrian at the top of the transport hierarchy, encourage bicycle use for everyone ,encourage public transport and most important of all is to get rid of cars and car parks .

                            

Jan Gehl also visited Canberra for a short visit and gave the Walter Burley Griffin lecture at the Shine dome late last year. While only spending a day here he took a swipe at our bicycle infrastructure ,the small pathetic bicycle lanes, so that the bicyclist is protecting the parked cars and not the other way round as it is in Copenhagen and many sensible cycling countries.

Jan Gehl, Cities for People

Incidentally the ACT Government issued a Canberra City Action Plan which will see another 3000 more carparking spaces constructed in the city centre. In Copenhagen there are about 2000 car parking spaces for about 2 million inhabitants and here we are constructing more and more carparks. Carparks are expensive and can cost up to $10 000 per surface carpark, $20 000 - $30 000 per car park space in a multi storey carpark and up to $40 000  per carpark space for under ground carparks, and Canberra's car congestion is set to worsen. Why didn't the ACT Government employ Gehl Architects I wonder?