Bike parking

In response to the previous post about shared bike and car parking, I was sent this photo from Amsterdam. Now this is bike parking!

Not just carparks

University of Melbourne: Royal Parade

Green Wall: ANZ building in Docklands

I absolutely love the green wall on the ANZ building in Docklands which is featured in the banner of Ideas for cities from cities.

I particiulary like the use of ficinia nodosa, or knobby club sedge. This plant is found on the dunes at Port Melbourne and also looks good as a landscape plant in front of the Beacon Cove towers where it has just had a tidy trim.

detail photo: Lyn Allison

Bike parking

I thought the bike parking at the Australian Open was better this year.

Looking after nature

the male flower of spinifex hirsutis. The male and female flowers are borne on separate plants.

zoysia macrantha recruiting at Perce White Reserve

Friends of Port Melbourne's Foreshore [FoPMF] hosted a workshop led by Jeff Yukovic of Biosis Research on Strategic Weed Management at Perce White Reserve. At the workshop it was confirmed that Perce White Reserve is the only site in Port Phillip where zoysia macrantha is found, shown above naturally recruiting.
Principles of revegetation

• planting should only be done as a last resort
• recruitment is preferred to planting
• plants should be site indigenous - not just locally indigenous
• create conditions for recruitment through weeding
• anything else is horticulture which may be appropriate depending on the context
• a guide to knowing when revegetation or horticulture is preferred is whether the original soil is present

Principles of weeding

• minimise off target damage
• rhizomatous plants such as sea wheat grass Thinopyrum juncei are not amenable to hand weeding
• mulch puts weeds into temporary dormancy and is not a permanent solution

I also learned that:

• Atriplex cineria has male and female flowers on separate plants, as does Spinifex hirsutis.
• Spinifex hirsutis has unlimited horizontal rhizomes which creates sloping dunes whereas marram has horizontal and vertical rhizomes and builds steep dunes.

Strategies

• Use rhagodia or tetragonia as edges
• [Jeff didn't have an issue with acacia sophorae or rhagodia]

Resources

• A census of the vascular plants of Victoria [2007]
• Flora of Victoria

Other

Look out for Coast saltwort salsola tragus a prickly succulent, annual, tumbeweed which may appear if Cakile maritima is weeded out

Pedibus

An alternative to the stretch hummer? My sister saw several of these on a recent trip to Europe. The young women with the party hats pedal as they drink their cocktails.

Cycling, style and blog guru

Here I am - I can't believe it - with Mikael Colville Andersen, the blogger who has created the phenomenon of Copenhagen cycle chic. I heard him speak twice this week - and as is often the case with speakers - he was even better once he had left his slides behind and was speaking freely.

He takes a culturally inspired approach to the bicycle [rather than a transportation or mobility driven approach]

Some of the points he made were :

• just make riding a bike the easiest way to get from A to B
• use happy, pleasant, positive imagery to stimulate urban bike riding
• lowered speeds enable bicyling to flourish - Barcelona and Dublin both now have 30 kms on local roads 
• reclaiming space for bikes rather than cars is a process of re-democratisation, re-humanising, re-creating liveability 
• its not about the bicycle - its about the broader urban context 

Some great quotes from Mikael:

• 'follow their [bike riders] desire lines - make it easy
• he likes 'being elbow to elbow with fellow citizens'
• he finds 'the upright bicycle the 'most anthropologically pleasing' and the 'most suitable for citizen cyclists'
• 'plant the bicycle on the urban landscape' or more expansively 'planting seeds of a meadow cycling' 
• inner urban areas should be 'saturated with bicycles' 
• In Copenhagen, bikes are like 'a fifth limb'