Apart from the history of the old Town Hall and City Hall, this book provides an analysis of Council’s policies and the delivery of services and infrastructure that shaped Brisbane between 1985 and 2013. It provides a permanent record of Council accomplishments during a period of enormous change. Established three months before Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859 one of the first issues that faced the new Brisbane Municipal Council was the need for a Town Hall. This publication brings to life the shortcomings of the old Town Hall and the forty-year battle to erect a more suitable facility, which became City Hall. The odyssey continued in the decade long financial struggle to construct Brisbane’s City Hall following the end of World War I. The Council’s aspirational vision for Brisbane, together with strategies and objectives, that make the city a great place to conduct business, work and live are embraced in the concept Brisbane – Australia’s New World City. Today, not only does Council provide the basic services but also must compete against other major cities, both in Australia and internationally, if Brisbane is to progress and not stagnate. With blue skies, a subtropical climate and outdoor lifestyle, Brisbane is positioned on the world stage as vibrant, innovative, clean and green, a great place to live.
How did one long and expensive party change a city forever? World Expo 88 was the largest, longest, and loudest of Australia's bicentennial events. A shiny 1980s amalgam of cultural precinct, shopping mall, theme park, travelogue, and rock concert, Expo 88 is commonly credited as the catalyst for Brisbane's 'coming of age'. So how did an elaborate and expensive party change a city forever? We'll Show the World explores the shifting social and political environment of Expo 88, shaped as much by Queensland's controversial premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen as it was by those who reacted against him. It shows how something initially greeted with outrage, scepticism, and indifference came to mean so much to so many, how a state better known for eliciting insults enchanted much of the nation, and how, to Brisbane, Expo was personal.
This book aims to fill the knowledge gap on how to plan, develop and manage innovation districts that are competitive in terms of both productivity and quality of living, justifying the massive investment put into place and at the same time doing both in a delicate and harmonious way. There is a need for smart urban land use that is wired with both hard infrastructures (e.g., telecommunication and transport) and soft infrastructures (e.g., diversity and tolerance). The reader learns this knowledge through conceptual expansions for key insights, frameworks for potential and performance assessment and best practices for global innovation districts. The authors begin innovation district planning with the role and effectiveness of planning a branding in the development of innovation districts. The next key topic of place making is recognised as a key strategy for supporting knowledge generation and innovation activities in the contemporary innovation districts. Another important topic is place quality where the reader learns to identify and classify indicators of place quality by studying global innovation districts best practices. The reader also expands their understanding on the classification of innovation districts based on their key characteristics through a methodological approach. The book concludes with district smartness studied through the socio-cultural role played by anchor universities in facilitating place making in innovation districts. Smart campuses, enabled by digital transformation opportunities in higher education, are seen as a miniature replica of smart cities and serve as living labs for smart technology. The book serves as a repository for scholars, researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students as it communicates the complex innovation district phenomenon in an easy-to-digest form by providing both the big picture view and specifics of each component of that view.
This book underlines the growing importance of knowledge for the competitiveness of cities and their regions. Examining the role of knowledge - in its economic, socio-cultural, spatial and institutional forms - for urban and regional development, identifying the preconditions for innovative use of urban and regional knowledge assets and resources, and developing new methods to evaluate the performance and potential of knowledge-based urban and regional development, the book provides an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of both theoretical and practical aspects of knowledge-based development and its implications and prospects for cities and regions.
In Volume 2 of The Place Economy our attention travels from the macro to the micro – from nations to neighbourhoods, countries to communities. Close to 60 experts from eight different countries explore what can be achieved via high-quality visioning, placemaking, planning and design. We examine how spaces are used, analysing the things required to meet community needs, from residents and visitors to commercial entities and private individuals. We give detailed attention to the role place branding plays in enhancing outcomes at all levels and discover the various skills and disciplines required when creating destinations that meet the needs of different people across various geographic and cultural places.
How do you creatively plan for a population of 62 million by 2100, Australia's current major city planning frameworks only account for an extra 5.5 million people. Whether we want a 'Big Australia' or not, Australia's 21st century is likely to see rapid and continual growth - and if we want liveable, high functioning cities and regional centres we need to think outside the box. Richard Weller and Julian Bolleter (Australian Urban Design Research Centre) offer optimistic and creative solutions for the future with one imperative: what we build this century will make or break our country.
The expansion of knowledge economy, globalization, and economic competitiveness has imparted importance of knowledge and innovation in local economies worldwide. As a result, integrating knowledge generation and innovation considerations in urban planning and development processes has become an important agenda for establishing sustainable growth and long-term competitiveness of contemporary cities. Today, making space and place that concentrate on knowledge generation and innovation is a priority for many cities across the globe. Urban knowledge and innovation spaces are integrated centres of knowledge generation, learning, commercialization and lifestyle. In other words, they are high-growth knowledge industry and worker clusters, and distinguish the functional activity in an area, where agglomeration of knowledge and technological activities has positive externalities for the rest of the city as well as firms located there. Urban knowledge and innovation spaces are generally established with two primary objectives in mind: to be a seedbed for knowledge and technology and to play an incubator role nurturing the development and growth of new, small, high-technology firms; and to act as a catalyst for regional economic development that promotes economic growth and contributes to the development of the city as a ‘knowledge or innovative city’. This book contains chapters reporting investigation findings on different aspects of urban knowledge and innovation spaces, such as urban planning and design, innovation systems, urban knowledge management, and regional science. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology.
Cities are perhaps one of humanity's most complex creations, never finished, never definitive. They are like a journey that never ends. Their evolution is determined by their ascent into greatness or their descent into decline. They are the past, the present and the future. Cities contain both order and chaos. In them reside beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice. They can bring out the best or the worst in humankind. They are the physical manifestation of history and culture and incubators of innovation, industry, technology, entrepreneurship and creativity. Cities are the materialization of humanity's noblest ideas, ambitions and aspirations but when not planned or governed properly, can be the repository of society's ills. Cities drive national economies by creating wealth, enhancing social development and providing employment but they can also be the breeding grounds for poverty, exclusion and environmental degradation. The 21st Century is the Century of the City. Half of humanity now lives in cities, and within the next two decades, 60 per cent of the world's people will reside in urban areas. How can city planners and policymakers harmonize the various interests, diversity and inherent contradictions within cities? What ingredients are needed to create harmony between the physical, social, environmental and cultural aspects of a city and the human beings that inhabit it? This report adopts the concept of Harmonious Cities as a theoretical framework in order to understand today's urban world, and also as an operational tool to confront the most important challenges facing urban areas and their development processes. It recognizes that tolerance, diversity, social justice and good governance, all of which are inter-related, are as important to sustainable urban development as physical planning. It addresses national concerns by searching for solutions at the city level. For that purpose, it focuses on three key areas: spatial or regional harmony, which examines the main drivers of urban growth in the developing world and explores the spatial nuances of economic and social policies; social harmony, which presents and analyzes new data on urban inequalities worldwide and describes the types of shelter deprivations experienced by slum dwellers in developing world regions; and environmental harmony, which examines the role of cities in the climate change debate, and the impact of global warming on the most vulnerable cities. The report also assesses the various intangible assets within cities that contribute to harmony, such as cultural heritage, sense of place and memory and the complex set of social and symbolic relationships that give cities meaning. It argues that these intangible assets represent the soul of the city and are as important for harmonious urban development as tangible assets. Harmony within cities, argues the report, is both a journey and a destination. Published with UN-HABITAT
Lucy Bullivant analyses the ideals and processes of international masterplans, and their role in the evolution of many different types of urban contexts in both the developed and developing world. Among the book's key themes are landscape-driven schemes, social equity through the reevaluation of spatial planning, and the evolution of strategies responding to a range of ecological issues and the demands of social growth. The author's research was enabled by grants from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), the SfA (the Netherlands Architecture Fund), the Danish Embassy and support from the Alfred Herrhausen Society.
This book describes seminal moments in the history of the capital city of Queensland, which in just one generation has grown from country town to vibrant modern metropolis. It had a tough start. It became a separate state with less financial support from London than any other colony in the mighty British Empire. Almost a century later is was briefly the Allied Forces headquarters for the Pacific War, delighting and depressing its citizens in equal measure. Then it had to shake off corruption in high places before it could realise its great potential. There was some intrigue along the way. Early Brisbane society was enlivened by its own aristocratic Lady Di; a gruesome murder started a dynasty; the Battle of Brisbane was hushed-up to maintain morale; and the local 'Rat Pack' played a rather different Joke. Prior to European settlement - as Meanjin - it was a busy meeting place for the many indigenous clans in the Moreton Bay region.
