I have been so privileged. The first part of my career has involved the whole urban design continuum from regional planning to individual detailed place-making projects. But magically, as if by chance, it has been book-ended by two seriously important urban projects: the Noarlunga Centre and the Kelvin Grove Urban Village.
The drive towards better cities depends upon significant exemplar projects, as test-beds, game-changers, societal landmarks, expressions of community values. But, in urban design, macro and micro interact. You know we have to get the right things in the right places. That is why the move in the previous SEQ Regional Plan to engage major hospital and university institutions as part of a well-detailed centres network was critical. But can it be done?
The Urban Village is clearly one approach. Like any exemplary radical urban design project, it did not arise from a vacuum or by intellectual chance ... but it did happen because the opportunity to implement ideas did arise, by a fortuitous “aligning of the stars”.
Never underestimate the fundamental importance of chance ... political, economic, personal, bureaucratic ... in advancing the urgent contribution we can make to effective sustainable cities.
The Urban Village, the joint Department of Housing and QUT brownfields project conceived in 1998/9, did not come out of nowhere. For me it was the logical progression of ideas I had been involved with since the early 1970s.
As my friend, Dennis Gibson, has reminded me: “success has many parents; failure is an orphan”. Dennis, Vice-chancellor of QUT from 1988 to 2003, knows the lineage of QUT’s central involvement in the Urban Village, next to its existing Kelvin Grove campus: the planning, the evolving thinking about education and the relationship of universities with society, the opening up of Gardens Point, the dealings with governments and much more.
I can only know with any certainty about my urban planning and design journey towards the KGUV project over almost three decades.
In the belief we are helped in our work by understanding how things happen, let me tell you some of it.
It began with being a student in the 1960s at the University of Adelaide, where the immediate proximity of other institutions and the retail / commercial / entertainment (yes, including pubs) heart of the CBD delivered a rich viable campus life, only a few walking minutes away. The public walked through the century- old campus. We treated the city as an extension of the university scene. Not for us the voguish architecturally- unified instant new isolated suburban campus. The idea of energetic proximity, at some levels actual mix, of people, uses and things, was “obvious”.
As a young graduate, I tried, unsuccessfully, through the Minister’s minder, a friend, to convince the SA Government not to relocate the vibrant Art School from an inner city residential neighbourhood (where its easy expansion was limited and controversial) to a suburban CAE campus .... but instead to recycle a number of available brick and timber-truss warehouses next to the vibrant Central Market. Access, urban vitality, a bit of grunge, character ..... but No Go: off to the artistic liberation of the wilderness!
My first big job in 1972 was with the SA Housing Trust, public housing and industrial authority, and new town developer. My “young Turk” role included the first big one: coordinating the planning of a new town centre for the southern metropolitan growth corridor of Adelaide. The political father of this Noarlunga Regional Centre was the great Alex Ramsay, public servant extraordinaire. Its creative genius was Newell Platten, thoughtful gifted architect and advocate. Its intellectual champion was Hugh Stretton, historian, political scientist and, in the early 70s, a major influence on thinking about Australian cities and housing. As a young professional, I got to be a lucky intimate part of that exhilarating, frustrating, innovative, game-changing urban planning and design process.
I shall argue, at another time and in detail, the importance to the history of Australian cities of this Noarlunga Centre, especially in its time and context. Let’s just observe that, in the context of Australia 1972, the NRC seemed, and arguably was, truly radical. In many dimensions, there were no precedents for it in national post-war city-making. It flew absolutely in the face of established planning policies and practices of all sorts: development, planning, bureaucratic, commercial. Its roots, if any, might have been found in European university towns and Greek villages .... and were about a vision of humane place-making in support of a sustainable, vital and egalitarian society.
Among its radicalisms, from its very first 1972 plans (through to its revised implemented 1976 plan and subsequent development and management until my leaving in 1990), it:
• focussed upon creating and ensuring an integrated “urban place” at each stage of its growth
• therefore “heretically” rejected use-based zones and pursued fine-grained mixed-use as the inevitable and desirable outcome of incremental concentrated growth
• rejected the powerful and evolving “donut around box” approach to major retail centres (enshrined in planning policy and commercial practice) by integrating the AMP centre into the very heart of the concentrated town centre
was closely connected to a new railway station and bus interchange
• assumed the town centre would be developed by many different private and public groups and so, while exercising some broad architectural goals, encouraged a degree of variety in expression (in the pursuit of legibility, scale and individual corporate identity), and
• in the evolving best practice of the times, tackled the issues of cars by having a pedestrian-only spine at its extending linear heart.
Also, in the context of South Australia,
• this practical and intellectual leadership role by the public housing authority was taken for granted......you expect that from pubic institutions, surely? ....and
• in recognition of the demands of high quality urban design and planning in pursuit of place-making, a special planning and urban design management mechanism was instituted involving a partnership of state and local governments.
But, most importantly for the subsequent journey towards the KGUV, the 1972 plan centrally included (“20 metres” from the shopping centre, across the central pedestrian spine) adjoining sites for both an urban university and a TAFE ...and expected them to front, define and help activate the people-oriented public realm. This “Town and Gown” approach was central to the town centre thinking....and the negotiated acceptances by Australian and SA Governments plus the university and the bureaucrats reflect the brilliance and ideology of Stretton and Ramsay.
While Fraser Government cuts sadly killed off in reality the university development, the central urbane location of such facilities could also be seen in the 1980s in the new Adelaide TAFE campus and the subsequent City West campus of UniSA (to which, in the 1990s, the Art School came, out of the suburban wilderness).
By the time I headed north towards the Sunshine State in 1991 (at a time of major challenge to the SA economy), it seemed obvious the integrated TAFE College was critical to the character, sustainability, vitality and hence survival of the Noarlunga Centre. Good for students and staff and good for the community.
So Town + Gown has been, from at least 1972, a working principle in my work.
In the midst of significant award-winning social housing programs and greenfield neighbourhood development in my new home of Queensland, chances for Town + Gown in SEQ were not immediately frequent .... but two actually arose in the first half of the 1990s, in the time of the Goss Government.
Queensland benefited significantly from the Building Better Cities Program (in spite of the subsequent myth-making that it was a failure). As part of the “de- institutionalisation” agenda for the western corridor, the public housing agency DHLGP acquired “future ownership” of the substantial and historic mental health campus at Challinor (whose functions were being relocated from this inner Ipswich location). Believing that there was support for radical thinking (and in my case based on my NRC and urban renewal experiences in Adelaide), the idea was enthusiastically put forward for “an urban village” renewal.
New buildings could mix with recycled heritage ones. A mix of uses could include higher educational, starter business, cultural, artisan, some retail and a broad range of housing types for a broad range of income groups. Attracted by the urbane ambience, houses
for the rich could line the golf course frontage while, among the adjacent middle-income offerings, a small enough percentage of affordable and social/community housing could take advantage of less scenic parts, even demonstrate the creative re-use of old structures and certainly demonstrate further the agency’s dramatic and award-winning pursuit of high quality design, being played out already across Queensland. The agency could lead the planning with Council and create sites for substantial private investment, while taking an acceptable profit from its intellectual capital to subsidise its essential community work.
Alas, no percentage of social housing was small enough for the local council who reacted powerfully and negatively as if, it seemed to me, newly arrived from the deep south, the further involvement of the agency threatened the very future of the community. DHLGP “walked away” from the site and with it went the urban village scenario (to be replaced in due course by the very different UQ campus). Town + Gown? Not yet.
Several years later, another chance arose. Griffith University was looking for a further campus, somewhere between Nathan and the top end of the Gold Coast. Again, the idea of a highly accessible location offering a close urbane relationship with the community, that is, urban design and planning in support of cultural, economic and environmental sustainability (let’s face it, for me the underpinnings of the NRC), was proposed by DHLGP. In detail, and encouraged by transport and state development type agencies, those of us by chance involved proposed, after scouring for opportunities, the large vacant site next to the Logan Council HQ on Wembley Road.
There the new outreach of the university could be
• close to the population served by the new Gold Coast railway,
• able to share central resource facilities with the council (the way, I said, TAFE and Council share and equally own/operate the library at the NRC),
• able to build socio-cultural/educational relationships with the adjacent public schools,
• able to relate to the business community of Wembley Road and take advantage of available rental housing in the community, and
• access open space further along Wembley Road.
Alas, this reaching out to a Town + Gown site wasn’t what Griffith seemed to want. As I understood the dialogue, although twice the size of the later KGUV, the site was “obviously” too small and constrained, with not enough room, for example, for the necessary carparks. This was a view apparently shared by the Minister’s principal higher education advisers who seemed in favour of the suburban model. The Feds with the building money didn’t seem to care and those in charge of Council seemed focussed at the time upon a theme park idea. So in 1995/6, the Government decided upon the isolated Meadowbrook site.
Not yet Town + Gown. But things were changing.
Those of us in the urban design business, based on experience and a changing urban society, had been moving from some of the established approaches of the 1970s and 1980s. Among those was our pursuit now of
• gridded network (not tree) neighbourhoods,
• pedestrian-friendly street-based precincts, not pedestrian only ones (like Noarlunga Centre)
• mixed-use,
• mainstreets more than big boxes ...or at least their integration....so, again, streets not malls,
• the importance of transit-served corridors
• the impact of major institutions as centres of urban intensity.
At QUT, my friend Dennis, with whom I continued to discuss ideas, was leading the re-integration of the Gardens Point campus with the City Gardens, strengthening the quality of the public realm connection to the CBD, advancing the urbane reinvention of the campus and the reaching out to the community through encouragement of public access such as that the Goodwill Bridge would deliver. I can only guess at the complexity, wisdom and energy of the evolving educational and institutional thinking. In line with evolving ideas of the creative global economy and what that had to mean for universities, the QUT leadership was championing a significant re-orientation of ideas and strategies that would lead, for example, to the highly successful Creative Industries cluster with its broad implications.
At this stage, as the Queensland Government itself began to talk about the Smart State, its emphasis seemed to be upon the
scientific research side of things and not much, if at all, upon the parallel implications for the design and planning of smart urban environments, as both expressions of and support for, the smart economy.
Nevertheless, when the Australian Government in late 1998 put the Gona Barracks, next to the QUT Kelvin Grove campus, on the open market, it was not surprising that I would want to talk to my friend about an idea for what, on a shared basis, just might be possible.
The site was a substantial dramatic strategic opportunity. Many doubtless had different visions.... residential? educational?, neighbourhood? gated community?... for how it could be developed.
What followed...or, for once, was allowed to follow.... was a powerful mainstreet-based mixed-use project with a range of interacting agenda about social, environmental and economic sustainability.
But fundamentally it was Town + Gown through a remarkable partnership of housing agency and urban university, with substantial support from city council. It took advantage of a unique chance, in time, place and context, to create what is still in significant ways a radical exemplar of a good thing.....and a good thing we need more of in the pursuit of sustainability.
The success of the multi-award-winning Kelvin Grove Urban Village...and I would argue it has been successful...has taken the political, managerial and professional advocacy, support and contributions of many key champions and committed participants.
We can debate the nature and extent of the success and the lessons to be learned but there are many, from key political and university leaders and significant academics and public servants downwards, who should be proud of what they have led, advised, protected, designed, enabled, managed, implemented. I cannot possibly know all that was done that was important.
But I might observe there is more to be done. It is not fully developed (and it will change over the years) but there are other existing, current and possible future places where the learnings from the KGUV, and the NRC, and the long-present and evolving community and urban design ideas they represent, can be responded to, implemented and advanced upon.
Just as for me there is the continuity of thinking from the suburban context of the 1970s NRC, which was quite unusual at its time, so also we might see the KGUV as having helped re-connect our thinking to the urbanist experience of other global places.
Success has many parents. From my part, I am privileged to have been involved in both projects and take delight in the intellectual links (via Challinor and Wembley Road) over almost three decades. I am confident Messrs Ramsay, Stretton and Platten would approve of the Urban Village.
John Byrne BArch BA MTP FPIA FRAIA is an urban consultant, a former manager of planning for the SA Housing Trust and Director, Urban Design and Planning of Housing Queensland. John is also an Adjunct Professor at QUT. He left the public service in
2006 to act as a consultant.
I have been so privileged. The first part of my career has involved the whole urban design continuum from regional planning to individual detailed place-making projects. But magically, as if by chance, it has been book-ended by two seriously important urban projects: the Noarlunga Centre and the Kelvin Grove Urban Village.
The drive towards better cities depends upon significant exemplar projects, as test-beds, game-changers, societal landmarks, expressions of community values. But, in urban design, macro and micro interact. You know we have to get the right things in the right places. That is why the move in the previous SEQ Regional Plan to engage major hospital and university institutions as part of a well-detailed centres network was critical. But can it be done?
The Urban Village is clearly one approach. Like any exemplary radical urban design project, it did not arise from a vacuum or by intellectual chance ... but it did happen because the opportunity to implement ideas did arise, by a fortuitous “aligning of the stars”.
Never underestimate the fundamental importance of chance ... political, economic, personal, bureaucratic ... in advancing the urgent contribution we can make to effective sustainable cities.
The Urban Village, the joint Department of Housing and QUT brownfields project conceived in 1998/9, did not come out of nowhere. For me it was the logical progression of ideas I had been involved with since the early 1970s.
As my friend, Dennis Gibson, has reminded me: “success has many parents; failure is an orphan”. Dennis, Vice-chancellor of QUT from 1988 to 2003, knows the lineage of QUT’s central involvement in the Urban Village, next to its existing Kelvin Grove campus: the planning, the evolving thinking about education and the relationship of universities with society, the opening up of Gardens Point, the dealings with governments and much more.
I can only know with any certainty about my urban planning and design journey towards the KGUV project over almost three decades.
In the belief we are helped in our work by understanding how things happen, let me tell you some of it.
It began with being a student in the 1960s at the University of Adelaide, where the immediate proximity of other institutions and the retail / commercial / entertainment (yes, including pubs) heart of the CBD delivered a rich viable campus life, only a few walking minutes away. The public walked through the century- old campus. We treated the city as an extension of the university scene. Not for us the voguish architecturally- unified instant new isolated suburban campus. The idea of energetic proximity, at some levels actual mix, of people, uses and things, was “obvious”.
As a young graduate, I tried, unsuccessfully, through the Minister’s minder, a friend, to convince the SA Government not to relocate the vibrant Art School from an inner city residential neighbourhood (where its easy expansion was limited and controversial) to a suburban CAE campus .... but instead to recycle a number of available brick and timber-truss warehouses next to the vibrant Central Market. Access, urban vitality, a bit of grunge, character ..... but No Go: off to the artistic liberation of the wilderness!
My first big job in 1972 was with the SA Housing Trust, public housing and industrial authority, and new town developer. My “young Turk” role included the first big one: coordinating the planning of a new town centre for the southern metropolitan growth corridor of Adelaide. The political father of this Noarlunga Regional Centre was the great Alex Ramsay, public servant extraordinaire. Its creative genius was Newell Platten, thoughtful gifted architect and advocate. Its intellectual champion was Hugh Stretton, historian, political scientist and, in the early 70s, a major influence on thinking about Australian cities and housing. As a young professional, I got to be a lucky intimate part of that exhilarating, frustrating, innovative, game-changing urban planning and design process.
I shall argue, at another time and in detail, the importance to the history of Australian cities of this Noarlunga Centre, especially in its time and context. Let’s just observe that, in the context of Australia 1972, the NRC seemed, and arguably was, truly radical. In many dimensions, there were no precedents for it in national post-war city-making. It flew absolutely in the face of established planning policies and practices of all sorts: development, planning, bureaucratic, commercial. Its roots, if any, might have been found in European university towns and Greek villages .... and were about a vision of humane place-making in support of a sustainable, vital and egalitarian society.
Among its radicalisms, from its very first 1972 plans (through to its revised implemented 1976 plan and subsequent development and management until my leaving in 1990), it:
• focussed upon creating and ensuring an integrated “urban place” at each stage of its growth
• therefore “heretically” rejected use-based zones and pursued fine-grained mixed-use as the inevitable and desirable outcome of incremental concentrated growth
• rejected the powerful and evolving “donut around box” approach to major retail centres (enshrined in planning policy and commercial practice) by integrating the AMP centre into the very heart of the concentrated town centre
was closely connected to a new railway station and bus interchange
• assumed the town centre would be developed by many different private and public groups and so, while exercising some broad architectural goals, encouraged a degree of variety in expression (in the pursuit of legibility, scale and individual corporate identity), and
• in the evolving best practice of the times, tackled the issues of cars by having a pedestrian-only spine at its extending linear heart.
Also, in the context of South Australia,
• this practical and intellectual leadership role by the public housing authority was taken for granted......you expect that from pubic institutions, surely? ....and
• in recognition of the demands of high quality urban design and planning in pursuit of place-making, a special planning and urban design management mechanism was instituted involving a partnership of state and local governments.
But, most importantly for the subsequent journey towards the KGUV, the 1972 plan centrally included (“20 metres” from the shopping centre, across the central pedestrian spine) adjoining sites for both an urban university and a TAFE ...and expected them to front, define and help activate the people-oriented public realm. This “Town and Gown” approach was central to the town centre thinking....and the negotiated acceptances by Australian and SA Governments plus the university and the bureaucrats reflect the brilliance and ideology of Stretton and Ramsay.
While Fraser Government cuts sadly killed off in reality the university development, the central urbane location of such facilities could also be seen in the 1980s in the new Adelaide TAFE campus and the subsequent City West campus of UniSA (to which, in the 1990s, the Art School came, out of the suburban wilderness).
By the time I headed north towards the Sunshine State in 1991 (at a time of major challenge to the SA economy), it seemed obvious the integrated TAFE College was critical to the character, sustainability, vitality and hence survival of the Noarlunga Centre. Good for students and staff and good for the community.
So Town + Gown has been, from at least 1972, a working principle in my work.
In the midst of significant award-winning social housing programs and greenfield neighbourhood development in my new home of Queensland, chances for Town + Gown in SEQ were not immediately frequent .... but two actually arose in the first half of the 1990s, in the time of the Goss Government.
Queensland benefited significantly from the Building Better Cities Program (in spite of the subsequent myth-making that it was a failure). As part of the “de- institutionalisation” agenda for the western corridor, the public housing agency DHLGP acquired “future ownership” of the substantial and historic mental health campus at Challinor (whose functions were being relocated from this inner Ipswich location). Believing that there was support for radical thinking (and in my case based on my NRC and urban renewal experiences in Adelaide), the idea was enthusiastically put forward for “an urban village” renewal.
New buildings could mix with recycled heritage ones. A mix of uses could include higher educational, starter business, cultural, artisan, some retail and a broad range of housing types for a broad range of income groups. Attracted by the urbane ambience, houses
for the rich could line the golf course frontage while, among the adjacent middle-income offerings, a small enough percentage of affordable and social/community housing could take advantage of less scenic parts, even demonstrate the creative re-use of old structures and certainly demonstrate further the agency’s dramatic and award-winning pursuit of high quality design, being played out already across Queensland. The agency could lead the planning with Council and create sites for substantial private investment, while taking an acceptable profit from its intellectual capital to subsidise its essential community work.
Alas, no percentage of social housing was small enough for the local council who reacted powerfully and negatively as if, it seemed to me, newly arrived from the deep south, the further involvement of the agency threatened the very future of the community. DHLGP “walked away” from the site and with it went the urban village scenario (to be replaced in due course by the very different UQ campus). Town + Gown? Not yet.
Several years later, another chance arose. Griffith University was looking for a further campus, somewhere between Nathan and the top end of the Gold Coast. Again, the idea of a highly accessible location offering a close urbane relationship with the community, that is, urban design and planning in support of cultural, economic and environmental sustainability (let’s face it, for me the underpinnings of the NRC), was proposed by DHLGP. In detail, and encouraged by transport and state development type agencies, those of us by chance involved proposed, after scouring for opportunities, the large vacant site next to the Logan Council HQ on Wembley Road.
There the new outreach of the university could be
• close to the population served by the new Gold Coast railway,
• able to share central resource facilities with the council (the way, I said, TAFE and Council share and equally own/operate the library at the NRC),
• able to build socio-cultural/educational relationships with the adjacent public schools,
• able to relate to the business community of Wembley Road and take advantage of available rental housing in the community, and
• access open space further along Wembley Road.
Alas, this reaching out to a Town + Gown site wasn’t what Griffith seemed to want. As I understood the dialogue, although twice the size of the later KGUV, the site was “obviously” too small and constrained, with not enough room, for example, for the necessary carparks. This was a view apparently shared by the Minister’s principal higher education advisers who seemed in favour of the suburban model. The Feds with the building money didn’t seem to care and those in charge of Council seemed focussed at the time upon a theme park idea. So in 1995/6, the Government decided upon the isolated Meadowbrook site.
Not yet Town + Gown. But things were changing.
Those of us in the urban design business, based on experience and a changing urban society, had been moving from some of the established approaches of the 1970s and 1980s. Among those was our pursuit now of
• gridded network (not tree) neighbourhoods,
• pedestrian-friendly street-based precincts, not pedestrian only ones (like Noarlunga Centre)
• mixed-use,
• mainstreets more than big boxes ...or at least their integration....so, again, streets not malls,
• the importance of transit-served corridors
• the impact of major institutions as centres of urban intensity.
At QUT, my friend Dennis, with whom I continued to discuss ideas, was leading the re-integration of the Gardens Point campus with the City Gardens, strengthening the quality of the public realm connection to the CBD, advancing the urbane reinvention of the campus and the reaching out to the community through encouragement of public access such as that the Goodwill Bridge would deliver. I can only guess at the complexity, wisdom and energy of the evolving educational and institutional thinking. In line with evolving ideas of the creative global economy and what that had to mean for universities, the QUT leadership was championing a significant re-orientation of ideas and strategies that would lead, for example, to the highly successful Creative Industries cluster with its broad implications.
At this stage, as the Queensland Government itself began to talk about the Smart State, its emphasis seemed to be upon the
scientific research side of things and not much, if at all, upon the parallel implications for the design and planning of smart urban environments, as both expressions of and support for, the smart economy.
Nevertheless, when the Australian Government in late 1998 put the Gona Barracks, next to the QUT Kelvin Grove campus, on the open market, it was not surprising that I would want to talk to my friend about an idea for what, on a shared basis, just might be possible.
The site was a substantial dramatic strategic opportunity. Many doubtless had different visions.... residential? educational?, neighbourhood? gated community?... for how it could be developed.
What followed...or, for once, was allowed to follow.... was a powerful mainstreet-based mixed-use project with a range of interacting agenda about social, environmental and economic sustainability.
But fundamentally it was Town + Gown through a remarkable partnership of housing agency and urban university, with substantial support from city council. It took advantage of a unique chance, in time, place and context, to create what is still in significant ways a radical exemplar of a good thing.....and a good thing we need more of in the pursuit of sustainability.
The success of the multi-award-winning Kelvin Grove Urban Village...and I would argue it has been successful...has taken the political, managerial and professional advocacy, support and contributions of many key champions and committed participants.
We can debate the nature and extent of the success and the lessons to be learned but there are many, from key political and university leaders and significant academics and public servants downwards, who should be proud of what they have led, advised, protected, designed, enabled, managed, implemented. I cannot possibly know all that was done that was important.
But I might observe there is more to be done. It is not fully developed (and it will change over the years) but there are other existing, current and possible future places where the learnings from the KGUV, and the NRC, and the long-present and evolving community and urban design ideas they represent, can be responded to, implemented and advanced upon.
Just as for me there is the continuity of thinking from the suburban context of the 1970s NRC, which was quite unusual at its time, so also we might see the KGUV as having helped re-connect our thinking to the urbanist experience of other global places.
Success has many parents. From my part, I am privileged to have been involved in both projects and take delight in the intellectual links (via Challinor and Wembley Road) over almost three decades. I am confident Messrs Ramsay, Stretton and Platten would approve of the Urban Village.
John Byrne BArch BA MTP FPIA FRAIA is an urban consultant, a former manager of planning for the SA Housing Trust and Director, Urban Design and Planning of Housing Queensland. John is also an Adjunct Professor at QUT. He left the public service in
2006 to act as a consultant.
Extract from Queenland Planner / Winter 2011. See full journal in: http://www.planning.org.au/documents/item/2951
