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It's Saturday and I have to travel out to a business park in Western Sydney to visit dad in hopsital. What a pain. Googlemaps is telling me it's a 30 minute bike ride from Sevenhills station. Blah. I dreading the cars and the anger and the fumes. Little did I know that there's actually decent amounts of cycleway and shared paths in Blacktown. There was only one nasty bit on a major road that I wasn't completely comfortable with but most of the 8 km ride was really pleasant. Even managed to pick some oranges from an overhanging tree (which were in plenty out there).  8 kms of shared path and cycleways from Seven Hills station to Norwest business park. 
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 The best place to get a Vietnamese Pho in Sydney is in Cabramatta. The same Cabramatta that was deemed a no-go zone in the 1990's because of the heroin issues and the Vietnamese ganstas. But that image is not reality these days. What Cabramatta should be known for is its amazing Vietnamese food and cycleways. Also its home of the most amazing vegan food. Since a lot of Vietnamese people are buddahists it's only natural that the biggest Vietnamese community has atleast 5 vegan friendly restaurants. So perfect, as an Asian vegetarian who loves cycling, Cabramatta is the ultimate weekend day trip. Did I mention how amazing all the cycling routes in this area is? No? Well they're some of the most extensive in Sydney.
2. Organise a group ride So I organised a ride out to Cabramatta along the cycleways to eat amazing Vietnamese food and started blogging about the amazing adventure. Through some social media magic a twitter conversation caught the attention of the local newspaper journalist. This then subsequently led to an invitation to be photographed for a story to promote Cabramatta cycleways and Cabramatta as a food destination. 3. Organise a Vietnamese feast
The killer formula In summary how to convert your town into a food destination:
More Info on cycleways in Cabramatta:
It's been a long time coming getting a walkway over that crazy road. I'm going to go against the grain of the Sydney bike advocacy groups and applaud this Engineering gem. The path is wide and the gradient is so low it's a breeze cycling up and down. So easy my mum could probably do it without an electric boost. The beauty of the bridge is the incremental rises, there are subtle flat bits. Check the RMS website for more details. When my company was looking for a new office to move to in the city my criteria was, they need to have showers. Sydney is an active society. Just step out to hyde park for lunch and you'll be bowled over by at least 42 joggers, soccer players, people rushing to a PT session. We hit the jackpot at 201 Elizabeth St. The "End of Journey facilities" include:
I applaud any council that enforces minimum "End of Journey" floor space into their LEPs. Checkout City of Sydney's 2012 LEP with its End of Journey policy which pretty much gives developers space for free: A building on land (other than land in Central Sydney) that is used only for the purposes of commercial premises and that has all of the following facilities together in one area of the building, is eligible for an amount of additional floor space (end of journey floor space) equal to the floor space occupied by those facilities Industry Leader Investa
Big shout out to Investa who is the leader in the Australian Property Management Industry pushing for these facilities to encourage and attract tenants to their buildings. Facilities are state-of-the-art. Bathrooms are stunning. Lockers are secure. Everything you need. Why would you even shower at home? Check out their office 400 George St, Sydney Australia - here. I received an email recently to engage with Planning NSW's latest community engagement initiative. I was bracing myself for some hideous online survey with hundreds of questions. So was pretty thrilled to see this interactive map with drag and drop pins to let the department know:
I love the language choice of these 2 simple options. Don't be negative and just hating on things. Give some real feedback and think about how you can solve a problem (change).  Planning NSW is using SocialPinPoint for its latest round of community engagement Social Pin Point lets you easily collect community opinion with an interactive map that lets users drop a pin with comments which are searchable and locate-able. Forget the post-it notes and gigantic maps at your next community engagement meeting. Just bring a few laptops or iPads and get users to zoom in on the virtual map and give instant comments for change or kudos. See what others are saying about the area and use the "likes" and "dislikes" icon to agree or disagree with other comments. Social Pin Point's website. Planning NSW's #mysydney engagement.  Someone's pin for the Glebe Markets has 1 Like and 0 Dislikes. |
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