plan making in west end

Project Description

How can we intentionally maintain and improve the cultural resilience and vibrancy of an outdoor area undergoing social change through promoting wellbeing?

Boundary St Urban Village Centre is a shopping strip of great popularity and vibrancy. The place is ever-changing and is constantly challenged to continue offering a great environment for social interaction and enhanced wellbeing outcomes of the place while retaining its economic revenue. For this reason, the area is currently exploring opportunities for enhancing wellbeing through landscape design and placemaking interventions. The aim of the project was to develop a revitalisation and regeneration plan for the Boundary St Urban Village Centre that is aligned with social, economic and environmental sustainability. Led by John Mongard and working directly with Kurilpa Futures, the West End Traders Association, community groups, Indigenous and youth support agencies, and relevant State Government agencies, the project focused on the work of place managers by developing a regeneration plan for the area.

This was achieved by getting the students to apply urban regeneration theory to West End, engage with the local community through a co-design workshop, develop a regeneration plan and generate a design proposal that is commercially viable for Brisbane City Council to activate one of the two sites available in Boundary Street.

The studio stemmed from a wider regeneration and holistic planning effort by studio leader John Mongard in his private practice Mongard Landscape Architects (http://mongard.com.au/).

Learning Methodology

Run as a semester-long studio, Plan Making for the West end brought together Planning students interested in learning strategies to attract people to a particular area in a way that brings social wellbeing as well as economic revenue. The students had the opportunity to work with an existing network of residents organised and working towards planning initiatives with people and nature at the heart of the objectives (Kurilpa Futures).

The students worked collaboratively in small groups to develop a West End centre regeneration plan and to fully develop a design proposal for a sustainable placemaking initiative to activate one of two unused sites in Boundary Street, West End.

As part of their design proposal, the students worked with a real budget, engaged with the local community through a co-designing workshop and presented the final results to the community and council alike.

How does this studio match PlaceAgency Objectives?

The students were led by John Mongard, a practitioner already working in the area to develop a new vision for West End with people's wellbeing at its centre. By delivering a co-design session with students and community working together, the results of this studio have strong potential to feed into the future plans for the area.

This subject is a good practice on what it is for planners working in placemaking within the local government sector. Moreover, they had the opportunity to work on a project already attracting media attention.