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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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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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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Sunshine Coast Industrial Park

By John Mongard For Landscape Architecture Australia, No. 129, 2011 The following article is a review of contemporary industrial landscapes and corporate parks, focussing on the recently completed Sunshine Coast Industrial Park on the Sunshine Coast by Gamble McKinnon Green. Industrial estates are the parts of our cities which are normally the ugliest and most […]

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Feeding, Greening, Caring

The challenge for designers in this moment of change is to re-conceptualise people as citizens rather than consumers, to place value on civic life and to create a shared democratic citizenship. This paper focuses on three important actions required to achieve a more ethical public realm: feeding/greening/caring. 1 MB PDF

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Tropical boulevard transforms Innisfail

Edith Street ‘hums’ on a Saturday morning with the bustle of shopping and street chatting. This festive moment lasts for a few hours and is exactly the kind of ambience and energy which needs to flow into other parts of the town and into the evening. New civic spaces have now been created to assist […]

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