Delivering Transit Oriented Development: Aligning urban street design to high quality place outcomes

Transit oriented planning for Activity Centres and Corridors in Perth envisions main thoroughfares which not only allow for vehicular movement but support a
diverse range of human activities, not dissimilar from a traditional high street atmosphere. Typically the arrangement of these environments is dominated by
vehicular movement and traffic capacity concerns resulting from decades of automobile focused planning and development. Despite much practical research about the need to incorporate human activity or place objectives into the configuration of urban thoroughfares to realise a broader public realm function, the integration of these objectives into planning and design remains constrained, and this is particularly so in the urban areas of Perth. Whilst entrenched institutional barriers and governance arrangements have a substantial role in limiting the implementation of these objectives, planning and design guidance also appears insufficiently developed to enable these objectives to be incorporated into common practice. The research presented in this report attempts to address this shortfall by improving the utility of Austroads’ movement and place framework for these types of urban thoroughfares, principally through clarifying the place dimension, but also by developing an additional framework to enable greater precision in the definition
of their spatial character and presenting an urban design framework to assist with their implementation.