West End Brisbane, Qld

The University Of Queensland

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/).

Location

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.

Activities – Studio Outline

Activity	Description	Key dates for activities	Key learning objectives
Studio Begins	Setting up the expectations and challenge for the studio	22 Jul 2019	General understandings
Site Visit	Students meet and engage with key stakeholders to get to know West End	29 Jul 2019	Deep listening, Empathy, Spatial Context Understanding, Complexity
Community engagement	Co-Designing workshop with local community to re-envision the area	05 Aug 2019	Creative thinking, Communication, Deep listening, Community engagement, Humility
Project Pitch	Final presentations in class	21 Oct 2019	Verbal communication and selling a project.

Students

The following students are enrolled in this studio and have chosen to appear on the Place Agency website. You may access more information about them and their interests by clicking each of their photos.