Re-Envisioning Hybrid Street

The relationship between well-being and vibrant cities is the most important factor to create a liveable city. Most of New Zealand and worldwide other cities have been facing many issues in transportation planning which directly affect to people’s wellbeing and vibrant life.

Nowadays, street design guidelines in many other worldwide cities are focusing on the importance of activeness and liveliness in how we experience streets while still maintaining the conventional street functions with transport accessibility and connectivity. However, there are no specific research that articulate the design strategy to identify ‘Hybrid Street’ which has both functions of street roles and accessible open spaces to encourage public transports which connecting the rich native sub-regional and regional cultures between neighbourhood, city, and region.

Research paper explores a ‘Hybrid Street’ which has both functions of street and transportation hub’s roles with the connections of existing railway network and other public transport infrastructures in Western Bay of Plenty.

Design framework advocates a pedestrian and transit-friendly streetscape connecting the rail lines to encourage street activities on the urban and suburban fabric, and it also supports other types of sustainable transport modes. A hybrid term of street typology articulates a vision and strategic approach with design criteria to advance key objectives.

The research objective has been investigated from a research question of ‘How to avoid the mono-functional logics of street with its public transport connections and how to translate the street to a hybrid space that supports a variety of different types of sustainable transport modes to improve the accessibility between the neighbourhoods, cities, sub-regions and region.

The design objective will be achieved through a systematic research methodology and the investigated hybrid street typology will be applied and tested on nine different streets in Tauranga city business district areas (CBD) where have significantly different spatial characteristics to see how it advances key objectives and achieves the research visions through the design developing stage.