In 2024, we brought together a group of local girls for creative workshops to uncover what impacts their sense of safety in public, identify a space to enhance and to co-design a place that they’d love to spend time in.
The workshops generated ideas including decorative lighting and greenery, comfortable furniture, areas to socialise and play equipment tailored to teens.
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Bernie Goodwin Park
Our engagement with the local community has informed exciting designs for additions to Bernie Goodwin Park in Morisset. We chose this site in consultation with local girls, and it was selected due to its proximity to Morisset High School, transport, shops and sporting facilities.
Enhancements will include social seating, hammocks, inlaid trampolines, feature lighting, landscaped gardens and new trees. This will create a haven for teenage girls, as well as the wider, community to enjoy.
Work will begin in early 2025 and open to the public later that year.
Pictured: Artist's impressions of Bernie Goodwin Park
The Safer Cities program
Did you know – women in NSW are twice as likely to feel unsafe at night in public places when compared to men.
Women are also much more likely than men to change when and how they visit public places based on how safe they feel (NSW Safer Cities Survey Report 2023).
Transport for NSW is investing $30 million to improve feelings of safety in public spaces, and around transport hub precincts across NSW – particularly for women, girls and gender diverse people.
The Safer Cities program has three aims:
- Increasing women and girls’ safety and access to public spaces
- Enabling women and girls’ to move freely and alone in their community
- Increasing women and girls’ engagement with how the spaces around them are designed and managed.
The program is engaging with women, girls and gender diverse people to understand their perspectives and co-design place-based approaches to improve perceptions of safety when walking to, through and within public spaces including our streets.
Safer Cities is funded by the NSW Government and led by Transport for NSW.