Wifi in the public areas around the shopping and cafe strips. Possibly extended into the major beach areas and maybe also as a joint venture with the sporting clubs possibly on weekends only (imagine free wifi at junior sports days). Also increase the walkability & reduce the vehicular access to the major cafe strips. Think Oakleigh (Portman to Atherton http://preview.tinyurl.com/pl5lkfu) or Acland Street (after the tram upgrades close off the Barkly St intersection) compared to Fitzroy Street or Brunswick St.

Shopping areas should all be 40km. Esp bay road shops near beach and station street. More cycle path in those streets to access beach and shops. No more large apartments ifn bay road as traffic is getting ridiculous

Apartments in Bay Road very poorly designed and located. Higher density housing does not have to include 6 to 8 levels. I agree the traffic on Bay Road is terrible. Especially if you have kids trying to commute around the neighbourhood (where is the crossing near Aldi!!!!). That said, Bayside has become an exclusive enclave for the wealthy. Highett and Cheltenham and even parts of Hampton and Sandy used to be somewhat affordable. Not anymore. Bayside needs higher density, affordable housing but located near the train stations. Council also needs to make the streets more pedestrian and cycle friendly rather than just cram in more residents and expect everyone to put up with more and more cars on the road.

Just took the Employment Strategy survey and a bit disappointed to see an either/or series of questions regarding the BBEA. Longer term, Bayside needs to keep creating employment opportunities close to home but also balance this with the need for affordable housing and community facilities. The BBEA should be planned as a long term resource for creating both 21st century employment opportunities and affordable, higher density housing. I would also suggest that Bayside are pretty slow off the mark with development of this strategy. A growing population, changing employment markets, housing affordability and climate change are hardly new topics that just came onto the radar.

It appears that the activity centres being referred to are, yet again, Sandringham, Hampton, Brighton and Brighton North. Given that a very small section of Highett Neighbourhood activity centre falls in Bayside, is this included in the statements?The statement "Bayside's shopping activity centres are quiet outside of business hours and the that's the way we like them" is a bit ambiguous to answer, because the bars and eateries that are open after retail trading hours means these areas are not quiet. I agree with Andrew McEvoy that apartments, not just in Bay road but the ones springing up all over Highett, are badly designed and crammed in. Not only that, the overall vision of council planning is completely lacking to allow for these vast numbers of apartments in such small areas in cul-de sacs and narrow streets. Bayside (and that includes Highett and Cheltenham) does not need any more high density housing. As Andrew McEvoy states, Bayside has become an exclusive enclave for the wealthy and even the poorly designed apartments are selling at ridiculous Bayside prices, putting them out of the "affordable" housing range. Just as in London, there is a great likelihood that many of these apartments will stand empty because they have been bought by overseas investors and there just isn't the population to fill them. Is it worth destroying Bayside (and again Highett and Cheltenham are included) for no reason? The BBEA, as stated, falls within Highett, Cheltenham and a small portion of Sandringham. The bulk of high density development is still being targeted at Highett and Cheltenham should C140 be passed. The CSIRO site will be developed (last figures stood at over 1000 dwellings - developers will clearly try to get a whole lot more in). This, in an area that has the least amount of Public Open Space and increasingly diminishing private open space due to all the condensed development. It is also an area seeing a steady loss of mature canopy trees due to the amount of apartment developments where fewer trees than were cleared are planted. Surely the best development of the BBEA is to "Rezone the area to residential (and NOT RGZ) with space for neighbourhood scale retail and community facilities (such as a library)" as well as some precious public open space.

The retail sector, as in the shopping strips of the activity centres, should be encouraged to grow with larger retailers setting up, as it will mean people do not have to travel to Southland for the range of high street shops found there. This will help to ease the amount of traffic along Bay Road. The boutique shops in the shopping strips will benefit from the increased foot traffic that larger retailers will bring. Health services, such as a private hospital with all the required services, will service the Bayside community better and support the Sandringham hospital. This in itself will bring a range of employment opportunities to the area. With the forecast population that Bayside is expecting, schools, and child-care facilities are sorely lacking, particularly in Highett and Cheltenham. Are there any figures to show what percentage of Bayside's population is actually employed in the BBEA? Is it the largest employment area in terms of numbers, or is it just in terms of the area that it encompasses? There is a fair amount of vacant land as well as many industries that retain a skeleton staff due to manufacturing being taken off-site.

There's a need to maintain diversity of character within the city and also higher rate yielding properties such as businesses. Emphasis should be on BCC facilitating ( not directly investing except in land terms) further private investment in enterprise facilities which are compatible with the green and 'comfy' bayside life; i.e. clean, green and high-tech, design, sports-oriented, craft, small manufacture etc.--some of which already exists. The existing industry site needs to be maintained in terms of its proportionate size, but usage could change ( over time) to include a sports stadium, health and aged care specialist facilities, major tourism accommodation ( servicing the entire South east), and specialist education ops. Height limitations should be relaxed so as to ensure maximum concentration of enterprises and activity per square metre. This might be especially the case for a hotel and education and health facilities so as to benefit from the views and without disrupting nearby existing residential areas. BCC's best role is that of a benevolent facilitator rather than taking direct action --and leveraging its ownership of land creatively ( whilst never letting go of it) with potential developers and financiers. This will require it to be more flexible and innovative than it has been in the past. If the character of the villages is to be maintained then large chain operations and/or franchises should not be encouraged; instead, BCC could stimulate the individual location character much more imaginatively than it has in the past. The world is full of the same old things and BCC should guard against purposely or accidentally stimulating that style of development in the city. Maintain diversity of life and neighbourhood character at all cost, as long term we must differentiate to retain standards of living and our essence. Small retailers in village strips are under pressure and this will increase, because of excessive rents based on the Ponzi scheme of valuation. There is very little incentive for landlords to improve their properties to enhance the exterior, with the result that street-scapes are hotch-potch and typical of all strips. This undermines the claim that our strips and villages have 'unique' characters; in essence they are the same --and offer the same boring product range-- as any reasonable suburb anywhere in Australia. Any 'uniqueness' comes from their location within the context of Bayside and its beach frontage, overall green character, and imagined snootiness. Recent re-vamps of strips have been well-meaning but reflect a lack of imagination and BCC's incredible risk aversion towards doing anything exciting or trend-setting. Parking and traffic remain a problem and will be exacerbated because of mis-matched parking requirements for new developments. Pie-in-the-sky ideas about encouraging greater pedestrian/bike traffic to and from activity centres should be forgotten and BCC consider investment in multi-story and underground parking stations (and appropriate traffic management), which link in with new accommodation and shopping plazas and cultural development in and within the perimeters of existing activity/shopping strips. To get the ageing population to local shops then the existing community bus services might be expanded or made more flexible to say a hail and ride service. BCC might see this as a worthwhile subsidy towards the retail /business sector. The strength of the villages will depend in the future on the number of nearby residents in apartments ( which should meet a better minimum standard than now) taking advantage of transport modes, proximity to beaches and green areas. Relaxation of height restrictions to five stories all along the strips --but with covenants ensuring good development, and satisfactory parking and infrastructure expansion seems both logical and appealing, provided its execution is not corrupted over time. Small retailing could also gain from BCC assistance to village associations with general marketing advice, mentoring of strip associations to form a city-wide group, cosmetic changes to enhance the street-scapes tied in with rate schemes, and a more ethical approach to parking management and fine impositions. Currently BCC parking time designations around business centres seem designed to ensure revenue projections are achieved. Overall, and whilst ensuring diversity of occupation and business within the city is maintained in the BBEA, there needs to be a unifying theme for the city which colours and shapes all its policies. This theme should build on the strengths of nature, coastline, open spaces, vegetation and leafy atmosphere and should be translated into all projects throughout the city. This would motivate and guide architecture for businesses and for all civic-linked projects and be evident throughout the streets and village shopping strips. It would result in policies designed to enhance streetscapes and maintain the veracity of the current environment, and would allow business to be differentiated from 'outside' competition. I suggest "Botanic Bayside" as an appropriate theme/branding for the city, but others may exist.

Create shopping malls, eg Parts of Church Street. Look at the possibility of an overpass over the railway line for pedestrians and stop cars using the street to complete it as a mall.

I have completed the survey, but found several of the questions to be compound and so ambiguous that it makes the data you collect too open to subjective interpretation to be useful. For example, regarding “it might be nice to have some larger format stores so we don’t always have to go to Southland. Perhaps we can have a few and put restrictions on how they present to the street to make them blend in”, how do you discern my attitude to each of the independent assertions/question bundled up in here: - do I want larger format stores outside of Southland? - if so, is this because I don't want to always have to go to Southland? - if such stores do go ahead, should there be restrictions to ensure they blend in to the street? - if so, should there be only a few such restrictions?