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Study to look at a greener Breese Street precinct

Area is one of Merri-bek’s hottest due to lack of vegetation

Nightingale Village resident Elissa McMillan and project supervisor Sarah Bell at Bulleke-bek Park in Breese Street.

Mark Phillips


BREESE Street in Brunswick is set to become a poster child for inner urban regeneration after being selected for a major study of how to make infill neighbourhoods greener and more liveable.

Running parallel to Sydney Road between Hope and Albion streets, Breese Street is one of Brunswick’s fastest growing neighbourhoods with hundreds of new apartments built in the area in recent years.

But the former industrial pocket has a harsh landscape of concrete and asphalt with little vegetation or natural cover from the elements.

The new study will examine how areas like Breese Street can be retrofitted to make them more resilient to heatwaves, drought and flooding, while improving their safety, liveability and sociability.

An eight-person research team from the University of Melbourne and RMIT University will work with local residents over six months to co-design what a greener Breese Street could look like. The outcomes of their research will be used to guide retrofits for other inner urban infill neighbourhoods in the future.

“If we are to meet our climate targets, and if we are to adapt to climate change, we can’t just focus on building new green stuff,” said project supervisor, Professor Sarah Bell from the University of Melbourne.

“We have to fix the streets and the buildings that we already have, and we’re wanting to see how can we do that with residents, with the people who actually live in the streets, to see what their hopes are, what they’re worried about, and how can we work together to design streets that work better for everybody.

“We’re particularly focused on resilience to climate change, so that includes a focus on reducing heat in streets and improving how rainfall runs off streets.”

Breese Street was chosen because it ticked the boxes of being an inner urban location that already had an active community seeking to improve the area.

Potential solutions will be developed through interviews and workshops with people who live and work in Breese Street.

Elissa McMillan from the Better Breese Block group and a resident of the Leftfield building in Nightingale Village said the harsh urban environment in the area was inhospitable to the hundreds of new residents who had settled there in recent years.

She said there that apart from Bulleke-bek Park, which opened in 2021, there were few places where people could meet outside as on warm days the heat was intensified by the amount of concrete and asphalt and lack of trees. The area was also prone to flash flooding because there was not enough green space to soak up heavy rain falls.

“We would love to see more greenery in our area, for cooling, for beauty, for water drainage as well,” she said.

“We’re not unique in that there are lots of examples like this across Victoria and across Australia where … there’s a lot more residents living in denser neighbourhoods and apartments in areas that were industrial but are lacking the infrastructure to support liveability and resilience.”

McMillan said a council study a few years ago had found that Breese Street was one of the most heat intensive areas in the entire City of Merri-bek.

The opening of Bulleke-bek Park had made a difference, but more work was needed to improve the area’s natural infrastructure, she said.


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McMillan said the issues were exacerbated in her case by a lack of safe spaces for her two-year-old son to play outside on hot days.

“When you live in an apartment, these spaces in your neighbourhood are so important as part of your day-to-day living as kind of living rooms.

“So for us, having spaces that are shaded and that are green, it doesn’t just reduce the heat, it also allows us to socialise and to play in our streets and have those little moments to pause and connect with people around our neighborhood.”

Bell said the researchers would look at the science of where to best place new greenery and what types of vegetation are needed to mitigate the urban heat island effect and improve water drainage.

Their input will be restricted to the public space of streets and footpaths, not better building designs such as green roofs.

“What we’re hoping to bring as researchers is to show what’s possible and where there are really hard problems like trees interacting with underground services, cables and pipes and so on, are there ways that we can solve some of the problems that are commonly experienced by councils all over the country in trying to get trees into environments where they’ve been neglected.”

Elissa McMillan said whatever solutions were found for Breese Street could be replicated around Australia.

“We’re really feeling hopeful that this street will look a lot different in a few years time,” she said.

“We’re hoping that we can support other groups to navigate these processes to improve their neighbourhoods.”

The research project will be run simultaneous with the development of a master plan by Merri-bek Council for the Breese Street block – a 7.7 hectare area between Sydney Road and the Upfield railway line which is home to almost 2000 people.

Concept designs are currently being developed for improvements that may include better cycling and walking infrastructure, increased greenery and tree planting, and improved road safety and public transport connections. That could result in increased investment for capital works in the precinct next financial year.

The university researchers expect to conclude their investigation of solutions for Breese Street by Easter.

Once they have finished at Breese Street, the research team will also conduct similar studies in a street in of Melbourne’s outer growth areas and an established middle suburban street.

The entire project will take almost two years to complete and will cost $1.5 million with funding from Horticulture Innovation Australia and the University of Melbourne.

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