Mel Yuan for Brunswick

Sydney Road is the beating heart of Brunswick and Coburg. More should be done for this, and other important local shopping strips. Strip shopping differentiates Melbourne’s inner and middle suburbs. Melbourne’s “high streets” are an important cultural, social and economic feature of our city and need ongoing care and attention.

See my posts on Sydney Road Accessible Tram Stops and the Shopping Strip Renewal Policy but we need to focus also on economic development and better aligning infrastructure initiatives. Some ideas:

• Economic development at local government level to target key local industries including:
  • Bridal
  • Fashion (RMIT precinct)
  • Speciality food retailing
  • Food & beverage specialty categories
    • “cheap eats”
    • Middle Eastern
    • Indian
  • Outlet shopping
• Local government support for important State Government economic development initiatives including the Digital Economy, Tourism, International Education, Creative Industries and Innovation to foster local businesses and encourage new industries to Merri-bek
• Better realising the tourism potential of Sydney Road in Melbourne and Victoria tourism marketing including speciality categories and local history and interest “walks”
• Targetted streetscape renewal works including customer amenities in seating, shade, signage, waste bins
• Continuing the “pop up” art in un-leased shopfronts and facilitating other “pop up” commercial activation, especially in apartment blocks with under-utilised street front commercial space
• Strengthening local laws around un-leased and under-maintained shopfronts to ensure landlords are re-letting their properties
• Continuing encouraging the use of upper-level spaces (“shop top”) for housing and other commercial rental through appropriate zoning and other local laws
• Developing a genuine parking plan which highlights and preserves important parking precincts and ensuring parking precincts are well-maintained with appropriate features (street-front seating, shade)
• A more innovative scheme of street plantings for shade and amenity. The City of Melbourne is a leader and Merri-bek should aim to follow.