Sharing spaces

Melbourne’s public spaces, such as streets, laneways, plazas, forecourts, parks and reserves, are important as they allow people to meet, socialise, travel and are used for recreation and leisure. Melbourne strives to ensure its streets, buildings and public spaces are alive with activity, where people of all ages and abilities feel secure and empowered to freely participate in their community and lead healthy active lives.

With a growing population our public spaces must often provide a number of social, recreational and environmental outcomes. The City of Melbourne must balance the needs of all public space users, including skaters. We are seeking your ideas to address some of the challenges of sharing public spaces in the city. Some of the real and perceived challenges of skating and other active and loud activities in the city include; noise and disturbance, potential collisions between different users of public spaces, domination and disruption of space and damage to infrastructure. The size of these challenges may be perceived differently by various people; however, they are still legitimate concerns. The City of Melbourne is currently developing assessment criteria to assist in addressing these challenges when locating suitable locations for skating in the city.

Neill Street Reserve, Carlton

A recently developed multi-purpose open space in which smooth steel coping has been incorporated into the design of concrete benches to withstand and accommodate skate activity as a shared use.

Multiple uses at Docklands

Existing areas within the City of Melbourne already exist where multiple uses of sports occur, such as the sports courts in Docklands, which have a number of activities all happening at once.