Conflict or Opportunity?

Perhaps, we should see this petition as an opportunity to start better conversations about what sort of streets and suburbs we want to live in, and how we might get there.

A Brisbane resident has raised a petition to Brisbane City Council (BCC) to allow parking on the verge in narrow streets. Their street is not wide enough for cars to park on both sides of the street and leave room for other vehicles to fit through the gap.

On some narrow streets, BCC has addressed this issue by restricting parking to one side of the street, but these residents want the rules changed so they can park both sides by parking on the verge.

Their campaign has led to articles, television, and radio interviews in the mainstream media and lively debates on social media. These stories and comments reveal attitudes to councils, public space, pedestrians, competing transport modes, community, and suburban lifestyles.

They also show our standard approach to problems.

Simple problem, simple solution.

The simple problem: I need to park my car(s) and there isn’t enough room on the street.

The simple solution: There’s space on the verge, so I could park there.

The debate descends very quickly into good guys blaming bad guys. I’m a good guy for making more space for other vehicles to get by (polite parking). The greedy developers didn’t make the roads wide enough. The greedy council approves too many houses in the space to get more rates. The council fines are just revenue-raising - and worse, the fine was more than the state minimum.

With this mindset, opposing views must be either wrong or irrelevant.

But it’s not just car owners. We are all prone to doing this.

Growing food on the verge is putting your passions ahead of other uses of this shared place. Claims of inclusiveness and community building by growing food on the verge ignore those we exclude. (I’m pleased to see more research emerging on this - see Inclusive Urban Greening  Byrne, Jason; Anders, Rob (2024). Inclusive Urban Greening. University of Tasmania. https://doi.org/10.25959/25592214.v1)

Likewise, advocates of rewilding and microforests put the use of common land for their individual passions over the needs of many other users and uses of this space.

Every one of these activities, shaped by one viewpoint, lays ground for conflict and a major dispute between residents, councils, and neighbours.

Complex problems require collaborations

Collaboration is often thought of as like-minded individuals and organisations working together and pooling their resources. This works well for well-defined projects but is not enough to address complex problems.

Complex problems need a much greater diversity of viewpoints and skills.

Collaborations between unlike-minds mean that we have to be curious about competing viewpoints. We need to listen, discuss, and come up with a shared purpose that satisfies everyone. It’s not easy and it’s not quick; but it gets easier with practice and quicker as we build trust and relationships.

Collaboration doesn’t mean compromise. It means being open to each other’s views, learning from each other, and combining different areas of knowledge and other assets to come up with innovative, localised, solutions that are much more than any one person or group could do alone.

On the verge, that means creating native gardens (resident’s effort) that combine with council street trees (arborist’s knowledge, cost of trees) to increase biodiversity, create shade to reduce urban heat, better manage stormwater, and make more walkable streets to encourage active transport (walking, cycling, etc).

Council policies are designed to make people consider the other priorities and uses of the space, while enabling the resident the autonomy to choose suitable native plants to suit their situation, tastes, and neighbourhood.

But what about the car owners who need to park there?

Parking vehicles on the verge is incompatible with all the other uses. But the parking problem is real and is a part of the difficult transition to more sustainable living required as our city grows.

Saying people shouldn’t have so many cars means ignoring the challenges of living a less car-dependent lifestyle in cities and suburbs that don’t provide options. We are still building suburbs without putting public transport, schools, and community facilities in place for the new residents.

While a simple solution is to invest in more public transport, that’s only part of the answer. It also needs changes in urban design to make public transport viable, better walking infrastructure and shade for the journey between the home to the transport stop and to the destination at the other end, integrated routes and timetables, and culture change. That’s only doable if we collaborate across disciplines and across sectors.

We have to stop arguing and start moving. We start with doable activities that provide immediate benefits but also take us towards the bigger outcomes we want.

Let’s start moving

If we can learn to collaborate on the verge, learn to see the conflict on the verge within the context of the larger transition to a more sustainable city, and see how many issues intersect, we’ll get much more than cool shady streets. We’ll build the skills and relationships to tackle much bigger problems than where we can park our cars.

Treating verge gardening as a simple solution to a simple problem is missing the potential and opportunity provided by this undervalued space. Verge garden projects can be a way of learning to collaborate and create solutions that address complex problems. Start by reading the Understanding the Space articles and putting it into practice. We learn by doing: experimenting, observing, asking questions, listening, and reflecting.

Perhaps, we should see this petition as an opportunity to start better conversations about what sort of streets and suburbs we want to live in, and how we might get there.

What do you think? What is your next step?