Placemaking Australia

The contribution of Australia to the global Placemaking movement has been significant. The region has made many of the same discipline-led, and project-led, planning mistakes as the United States, but has often been quicker to admit it, and more importantly, quicker to learn, and develop new models. The city governments (councils) and professions have been less defined by their silos, and been innovative in synthesizing, and applying, new models of place-led design, governance, and economic development.

There has been broad placemaking collaboration with many inspiring partners to seed, inform, and drive the regional placemaking movement in a broad range of contexts across the continent.

The placemaking movement was seeded when Penny Coombes brought over Fred Kent and Kathy Madden to Sydney around 1990, to help to set up her People for Places and Spaces to do similar work to what Project for Public Spaces had been doing the the United States. Gilbert Rouchcouste, with his pioneering placemaking organization Village Well, brought Ethan Kent around the continent a few times ifrom 2007-2010, to jumpstart the regional movement, leading regional Placemaking Master Classes together in Melbourne, Sydney, Sunshine Coast, Perth, Auckland, and Lake Taupo, NZ.

Ethan later led trainings and workshops with David Engwitch and his Creative Communities, Kylie Legge and her Place Partners, and inthe Sydney region partnered with Ed Blakely’s Future Cities Collaborative (FCC) on Placemaking trainings and workshops for their network of Placemaking leaders in New South Wales, keynoting many of their public events. Site-specific workshops have ranged from rethinking the Cliff Walk and Bondi Beach, to inspiring a very “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” transformation of a park in Liverpool. With FCC we conducted city-wide capacity building trainings from Wollongong up to Gosford and Blacktown to Woollahra. FCC has also had us run separate Placemaking master-classes for Arts NSW, Transport NSW, and Urban Growth NSW, do lots of regional media, and collaborate on their dynamic US Study tours.

Placemaking Conferences and Keynotes

In collaboration with local partners Ethan was also invited to keynote many of the relevant regional conferences and speaker series, including, three International Society of Cities, Towns and Communities (ICTC) conferences [2007, 2012, and 2019], Parks and Leisure Australia, the Adelaide Velo City Conference, Queensland Planning's Shaping SE Queensland thought leaders series, the Media Architecture Biennale and MPID Global Innovation Summit in Sydney, Auckland Conversations, and two Property Council of South Australia events. He has collaborated closely with Place Leaders, the network of the largest cities and public development agencies, keynoting four of their conferences, and then a Place Leaders conference, as part of our global Future of Places series, gathering the Lord Mayors from the seven largest Australian cities, all declaring Placemaking as central to their work going forward. Place Leader's new magazine, IN PLACE, further demonstrates the Placemaking thought leadership from the region, and how it is connected globally.

Local placemaking leaders with Ethan helped conceive and organize, Places Victoria’s 2010 Melbourne Placemaking Series.

Placemaking Training and Capacity Building

Working with many leading councils, Ethan customized trainings, often including strategic planning, and site specific work, for Melbourne, Bankstown, Wodonga, Sunshine Coast, Port of Melbourne, Parramatta, Canada Bay, Newcastle, Coburg, the Gold Coast and the Sydney Regional Commission. We have also conducted trainings for public development corporations and private developers including: General Property Trust, Places Victoria, Lend Lease, Perth’s MRA, and Renewal South Australia.

Major Demonstration Placemaking Projects and Institutionalizing Placemaking in Cities

Placemaking methodologies with Ethan's help have been applied to in-depth work to shape the direction of many of Australia’s most significant public spaces including Melbourne’s Federation Square and Victoria Market, Adelaide’s Festival Plaza, Parramatta’s Parramatta Square, Hamilton, NZ's Garden Place, and Waterfront Auckland. PPS continues to support, and learn from, these places, and their leadership on place-led development, place governance and placemaking.

Fred and Kathy were hired to shift Perth’s public development authority, MRA, from being very design-led to be place-led, with deep involvement in demonstration projects on the Perth Cultural Centre and Perth Link Square. The Cultural Centre, in particular demonstrated, how an underused public space could be rapidly transformed through “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” improvements. It has become a model for cultural districts to truly create culture.

Adelaide led Australia early on in working to institutionalize Placemaking into their governance. Over several trips, Ethan worked to build capacity for placemaking among all departments, and with precinct partners, and created a “Lighter _quicker, Cheaper program called Splash Adelaide. Under, Peter Smith’s leadership as CEO, Adelaide pioneered innovation around Place Governance developed metrics for measuring their success around “Place Capital”.

Peter Smith after over 6 years as CEO, stepped down to help advance Place Governance and Placemaking regionally, and globally, and is working in close partnership towards these goals. Adelaide continues to make great progress around Placemaking under the leadership of Lord Mayor Martin Haese. Peter Smith then became CEO of Port Phillip continuing to pioneer place-led governance and help to found PlacemakingX and Placemaking Australia.

Next Steps for the Australasian Placemaking Movement

Australia and New Zealand are at a ripe time to develop the leading models for Place Governance and place-led development that the rest of the world can learn from. IN late 2019 Australia held launch events (often with trainings, keynotes, and workshops) for PlacemakingX in Townsville, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. Each city maintains a strong local network and national a network is formalizing as well.

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