A comparative study of Melbourne’s freeway planting designs – implications for biodiversity conservation by Zoë Metherell
Partners: The Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology
Jury comment
This research project is an interdisciplinary partnership that sought new ways for landscape architects to meet the challenge of preserving biodiversity in the face of threats such as urbanisation, climate change and habitat loss. In Melbourne extensive planting projects are undertaken along freeways. These projects provide opportunities to improve urban biodiversity conservation on a grand scale. This research compared planting designs from seven projects representing a 40-year time span.
This project demonstrates excellence in methodology, methods (data collection and analysis) and in the writing up of final outcomes. It offers landscape architects, local and regional authorities a rigorous and cogent demonstration of how ecological analysis can be applied to landscape architectural designs, to achieve biodiversity.
