Anyone who has travelled to New York in the past eight years will be familiar with The High Line, a 2.5-kilometre long section of elevated railroad re-purposed as a public park.
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The above-ground attraction is credited with revitalising the surrounding neighbourhood, such has been the increase in real estate prices since its 2009 opening.
A draft plan released by Bendigo council planners this week proposes something similar for the central Victorian city’s creek.
Under the 50-year public space vision, Bendigo Creek could become known as the Low Line, a public thoroughfare below street level.
City of Greater Bendigo strategic manager Trevor Budge imagined a completed Bendigo Creek trail transporting people from Crusoe Reservoir all the way to Huntly.
“People wouldn't have necessarily conceived the creek through the centre as a path from one place to the next,” City of Greater Bendigo strategic manager Trevor Budge said this week.
“But it could be walking, cycling, it could be both.”
He admitted there were some problems – the creek’s heritage status, its lack of entry and exit points – but floodwater that periodically ran through the creek was not one of them.
“It's not like the floodwaters come down all of a sudden,” Mr Budge said.
“People get plenty of warning.”
Bendigo waterways are a key component of the draft plan, which recommends using the natural, public corridors to connect different locations around the region.
It was a network other cities would “die for”, Mr Budge believed.
While sections of the corridor were already established, including Spring Gully Creek and Jobs Creek, there were still gaps in the Bendigo Creek between Golden Square and North Bendigo, and north of Epsom.
Bike Bendigo founder Robert Kretschmer, whose organisation ran a monthly ride along the Bendigo Creek trail, said increased access to the space would encourage more people to cycle to and from the city.
Sending sections of the Spring Gully trail below the road had already proven to be a "game changer" for cyclists for whom car traffic could be a deterrent, Mr Kretschmer said.
He also advocated for protected bike lanes, another idea floated in the 50-year proposal.
The council staffer hoped the draft plan, which also posed the idea of turning Charing Cross into a town square, challenged the way Bendigonians conceived of public space and how it was used.
Roadside verges, traffic islands and lawns outside public buildings were all under-utilised patches of public land, Mr Budge said.
Suburbs’ unequal share of space
Despite having some of the poorest quality land in Bendigo, disadvantaged suburbs are losing out to more privileged neighbourhoods when it comes to public space funding.
Forty percent of the City of Greater Bendigo’s public space budget between 2001 and 2015 was directed to central Bendigo, council documents reveal, twice the total amount spent on space inside the municipality’s five most disadvantaged suburbs.
Long Gully, Ironbark and California Gully were among the suburbs with the lowest ranking public space quality in the City of Greater Bendigo.
Those same areas rank lowest on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ socio-economic index of Bendigo suburbs.
City of Greater Bendigo strategy manager Trevor Budge said while Bendigo had an “excess of public” space, much of it was “neglected”.
“We know Rosalind Park and the Botanic Gardens, Barrack Reserve at Heathcote,” Mr Budge said.
“Now we're encouraging people to identify the areas in their local neighbourhood that need to be supported.”
Whipstick councillor James Williams, whose ward takes in Long Gully, Ironbark and California Gully, said the council was already addressing the unequal distribution of quality space.
He listed the Long Gully Splash Park, Canterbury Park upgrade and Epsom soccer fields as examples of money being spent beyond the CBD’s borders.
The lack of high-ranking public space in some neighbourhoods was the legacy of mining, not neglect, Cr Williams said, saying soil contamination made parkland less possible in some parts.
The lack of community space has forced some residents to take matters into their own hands.
The Ironbark Gully Friends group planted 4000 trees and shrubs along their 10-hectare public corridor in 2016.
They were also planning a shared bike and pedestrian path to connect neighbouring suburbs so “they are not separated by labels such lower or upper socio-economic but are united as one community,” organiser Jacky Vincent told the Bendigo Advertiser last July.
“So that the community has something to take ownership of, to be proud of.”
Putting forests back on the walking track
A neglected bushland trail connecting forests around Bendigo could be restored if a proposed public space plan gets the green light.
The City of Greater Bendigo proposal recommends re-establishing the Bendigo Bushland Trail, explaining the track had fallen into disrepair since its establishment more than 20 years ago.
The two-decade-old pathway cuts through land managed by the City of Greater Bendigo, Parks Victoria and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.
Parks Victoria acting chief ranger Mark MacKimmie said maintenance work to the public pathway was carried out “as required”, with two decaying bridges replaced in recent years. The organisation was working with Bendigo council staff on plans for the Bendigo Bushland Trail, he said.
The municipality’s strategic manager Trevor Budge said a revitalised trail would run for 80 kilometres and connect with regional thoroughfares, including the O’Keefe Rail Trail.