The Governance of Traffic Noise Impacting Pedestrian Amenities in Melbourne Australia: A Critical Policy Review.

By identifying a unified aim of Federal, State, and Local government authorities to deliver healthier, more liveable urban spaces and enable walkable neighbourhoods in Melbourne, Australia, questions emerge regarding noise data collection methods and the policies that aim to protect pedestrian areas from potential increases in urban traffic noise. It highlights a missed opportunity to develop strategies that provide explicit guidance for designing more compact urban forms without diminishing pedestrian amenities. This study investigates the governance of traffic-induced noise pollution and its impact on pedestrian amenities in Melbourne, Australia.

Informing Streetscape Design with Citizen Perceptions of Safety and Place: An Immersive Virtual Environment E-Participation Method.

As our cities grow, it is important to develop policies and streetscape designs that provide pedestrians with safe comfortable walking conditions and acknowledge the challenges involved in making urban places feel liveable and safe while understanding the critical role of streets around busy destinations. To understand these challenges at a nuanced, human level, new methods of citizen engagement are needed. This paper outlines the development and application of a new citizen perception collection method, using immersive virtual environments (IVE), coupled with an interactive emoji affective activation-pleasure grid and digital slider elements, embedded within an online e-participation survey to quantify, and rank the impact of individual (single-variable) urban design elements and safe system treatments on pedestrians' perceptions of safety and place.

Green Infrastructure and Urban-Renewal Simulation for Street Tree Design Decision-Making: Moderating Demands of Stormwater Management, Sunlight and Visual Aesthetics.

The design of green infrastructure in urban renewal sites is complex, requiring engagement with existing communities and future sustainable development goals, consideration of existing and future urban forms, changing climatic conditions, and the sites often being in low-lying and flood-prone areas. Traditional street tree decision-making approaches are inadequate for addressing the scale, environmental complexity, and mutability of decisions involved in urban renewal projects-new tree selection approaches that consider complex competing criteria for tree selections addressing stormwater management systems, visual assessment and solar amenity are needed. This paper describes a new method of multi-criteria street design decision modelling that combines outputs from hydrology modelling, digital procedural tree modelling and urban form analysis, with animation and gaming technologies.

Do Safe Bike Lanes Really Slow Down Cars? A Simulation-Based Approach to Investigate the Effect of Retrofitting Safe Cycling Lanes on Vehicular Traffic.

Cycling is a sustainable transportation mode that provides many health, economic and environmental benefits to society. Cities with high rates of cycling are better placed to address modern challenges of densification, carbon-neutral and connected 20-min neighbourhood goals. Despite the known benefits of cycling, participation rates in Australian cities are critically low and declining.