Melbourne’s laneways get a green lift
Melbourne's gritty laneways - famous for graffiti art and coffee culture - are going green. As part of a new plan to increase the biodiversity and liveability of the CBD the Melbourne City Council has begun issuing greening permits to residents and businesses to beautify their laneways with palms, creepers, shrubs and blossoms.
Transcript
00:00 Flash and panache. Tourists and locals love Melbourne's laneways. But could Bankseas and
00:07 Banksias thrive side by side and this be the future for hundreds of walkways?
00:13 It is a breath of fresh air.
00:15 It makes these areas far more attractive and appealing for locals.
00:22 Five years ago the Melbourne City Council started a $2 million program to help residents
00:26 green four CBD laneways like Guildford Lane. And the results are both obvious and invisible.
00:32 For me it's actually not about the plants anymore, it's about the people. The meeting,
00:38 the connections, the learning has been profound.
00:43 So it's expanding the program and issuing greening permits that will allow residents
00:47 to plant with guidance and support.
00:50 For former Mount Eliza resident Darren Morgan, inner city living has come at a cost.
00:55 A big culture shock. No green, no bird life.
00:59 But his laneway is the first to get a permit.
01:01 People are starting to get lorikeets back in here, which is great. And we've got a resident
01:06 carawong in the area now, which is fantastic.
01:10 The city has some 1700 laneways and the council says the pavements add up to 70 hectares.
01:16 But the walls equate to 150 hectares of potential plant space. Space that when explored, businesses
01:22 say can attract a different kind of green.
01:25 It's a real sort of green splash and beacon. So people get kind of drawn along into the
01:30 laneway and so they end up in our venue and all the other venues in the laneway surrounding
01:36 us.
01:37 These greener laneways really do help us reduce the heat island effect in the city. They help
01:42 us manage extreme weather events, particularly storms, more efficiently. And it's really
01:49 a tick tick plus plus benefit benefit.
01:51 The council says it's not choosing greenery over graffiti. In fact, nothing's changing
01:56 when it comes to Melbourne's famous graffiti laden laneways. What it does want is, however,
02:01 for some laneways to evolve to the point where art and plant co-exist.
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