Toondah Harbour: poisoned chalice or beautiful gateway?

Toondah Harbour has been the subject of a heated debate about its future, particularly around recent development plans for intense highrise development adjacent to the Ramsar listed wetlands. The Walker development plan was called- in by the Federal Government in 2024 due to unacceptable environmental impacts. Following a five month community-based planning and design process, […]

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2 degrees: up close and personal

When young people protest on the street and tell us that we are destroying their future due to our failure to act on climate change, we know we have really ignored all the signs. Who cares about climate change? We are numb to the issue because we are daunted by its size and extent. We […]

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The Green Space Strategy

The big idea in our strategy is that we can reclaim at least 11 hectares of unused public spaces to create the public realm that the community needs now and into the future. This space is available now on unused road reserves and crown lands within the peninsula and should be used to build the […]

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The parsley, the pig and the farm

Is it a myth that Australia’s cities are amongst the most liveable in the world? That tag may be true for the lucky people who live within a 10 kilometre radius of each city. All our ‘sustainable’ cities are quite nice within their core. Outside of that core we appear to have failed to make […]

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Plain Land: Killing Places Slowly

Welcome to Plainland. Plainland is on a plain designated for the growth of Brisbane. It has a shopping centre off the highway and sits amongst the cows of surrounding grazing land. Plainland is plain: the cost of house and land dictate it. A bold entry statement and a path to the shops are civic flourishes. […]

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Unfolding space

How  a space unfolds into a place is a mystery. What ingredients are required to make our cities valued? We go about our daily lives and the things we touch and feel remind us of who we are and where we belong. For most of us the things we care about are actually small and […]

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Dis location – Survival of the local

The marketplace is clearly failing the landscapes and the towns we live in. Australian country towns are dying as the global economy seeks to extract the cheapest goods in the cheapest location. We live in a very large island with a small population and with inbuilt inefficiencies of distance and time to markets. Our standard […]

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