POPS!
Adrian Bonanni

Encourage indoor Privately-Owned Public Space (POPS) in dense urban areas, accessible for all to enjoy.

Greater Sydney’s population is estimated to grow to 6.6 million by 2036, placing pressure on our existing open spaces. Opportunities to increase open space in our urban centres is limited by resources and physical constraints. People are living in smaller homes and households with the need and/or desire to socialise in common indoor spaces. Most of our indoor spaces – where people can meet and congregate – are within shopping centres, food courts, clubs or gyms with strict rules of admission or membership fees.
Indoor POPS offers the public to use indoor spaces freely, without the pressure to spend money.
Indoor POPS offers a place to sit, relax, eat or drink, to meet up with friends, to find respite from the weather or just simply hang-out.
Indoor POPS draws from New York City’s “POPS” program which allows private property owners to provide and manage different types of publicly accessible spaces, including plazas and arcades, in exchange for development bonuses.
In NSW, Indoor POPS should allow variations to development standards, such as height and floor space, in exchange for the provision and management of public space in perpetuity for the life of the development.
Indoor POPS must be inviting and clearly recognisable as public space, be fully accessible, safe and secure, and comfortable for different types of users. Design codes will ensure indoor POPS provide minimum standards for the provision of seating, types of seating (fixed or moveable), landscape, materiality, opening hours, rules, operations and management.