Inner West of Sydney – Good Life In the Urban Jungle

Newtown Square – build identity and connect businesses

Published 2020/08/31 by Mr Hounsell

Built around Sydney’s tramways in 1890s, Newtown needs KPIs to prioritise humans not cars.

Proposed changes overlaid on aerial photography

The proposed transformation will activate Newtown as a premier destination for locals, as well as domestic and international visitors.

Bring the tram sheds back to life – creating a new gathering point. Landscape and open the areas around the tram sheds, with increased passive surveillance and human scale lighting. Make more spaces to sit, reducing crowding, and create new cooling green islands.
Create quicker connections between business areas with new paths. Most people head straight to northern King St. Use shared identity, anchors, and wayfinding to encourage visitors to spread.
- Newtown only receives 10% of the international visitors as the Opera House
- Reactivate Brennan Lane and the old path along the Bank Hotel.

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Demonstrating place making and safe streets in Enmore

Published 2020/08/30 by Mr Hounsell

Making Enmore’s commons safer for children, removing rat-runs, and giving more space to people

This compact area can be used as a low-cost minimal-disruption demonstration transformation.

Safe 30 km/h limit in these narrow residential streets will increase pedestrian safety, decrease pollution, and will achieve Vision Zero.
- Speed limits of 50km/h on narrow streets (60km/h on Liberty St) are dangerous and frequently results in accident and near-misses.
Raised continuous sidewalk on all roads throughout the area will psychologically calm traffic by showing the area is human-centric.
- The daylighting zones will be enhanced with seating, tables, and swings.

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Winter Reading

Published 2019/04/02 by Mr Hounsell

Read two articles to understand the history of trams in Sydney and the marginal utility of motorways.

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Transport for NSW’s research collaborations with UTS Capstone students

Published 2018/07/01 by Mr Hounsell

Transport for New South Wales collaborates with a range of final-year Capstone students from the University of Technology Sydney. These collaborative research projects have led to creative and innovative approaches for improving our transport system.

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Westconnex Meeting at Balmain

Published 2016/12/23 by Mr Hounsell

Dr Zeibots and Mr Hounsell address a public meeting at Balmain after Westconnex Stage 3 & Stage 4 revealed. Tweet

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Presentation 11 – Westconnex – 2016 – Balmain

Published 2016/05/19 by Mr Hounsell

Town Hall presentation to NoW Public Transport. As PDF. Balmain Town Hall Tweet

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Presentation 7 – Urban Growth NSW – 2015 – Leichhardt

Published 2015/11/03 by Mr Hounsell

Public presentation called by precinct committees. Part 1 as a PDF. Part 2 as a PDF. Local building owner Vera was very angry with mention…

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Is Staple’s Sydney Metro good for Erskineville and Sydney.

Published 2015/10/30 by Mr Hounsell

This is a video of the presentation I gave at the Friends of Erskineville public meeting. I felt awful this night too. There really was…

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What would Westconnex do to King St, Newtown?

Published 2015/10/30 by Mr Hounsell

A video of my presentation to the public meeting held by the Newtown Westconnex Action Group. I had such an awful cold this night. Tweet

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Urban Growth and Parramatta Road

Published 2015/10/30 by Mr Hounsell

A video of a presentation I gave on Sydney Metropolitan Strategy, Urban Growth NSW, and Parramatta Rd at Petersham Bowling Club. Presentation As PDF Tweet

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Tag: Inner West of Sydney

Built around Sydney’s tramways in 1890s, Newtown needs KPIs to prioritise humans not cars.

Making Enmore’s commons safer for children, removing rat-runs, and giving more space to people