Robert Freestone

Neighbourhood open space ranks highly as a key component in suburban liveability assessments, originating from the development of urban planning as a profession and the proliferation of the garden suburb. Community Green uniquely connects the past, present and future of planning for small open spaces around the narrative of internal reserves. The distinctive planned spaces are typically enclosed on every side, hidden within residential blocks, serving as local pocket parks and reflecting the evolving values of community life from the garden city movement to contemporary new urbanism. This book resuscitates the enclosed, almost secretive reserve from history as a distinctive form of local open space whose problems and potentialities are relevant to many other green community spaces. In so doing, it opens up even wider connections between localism and globalism, the past and the future, and for connecting community initiatives to broader global challenges of cohesion, health, food, and climate change. This fully illustrated book charts the outcomes and implications of this evolution across several continents, injecting human stories of civic initiatives, struggles and triumphs along the way. Community Green will be of interest to a wide readership interested in studying, managing and improving the quality of all small open spaces in the urban landscape.

Neighbourhood open space ranks highly as a key component in suburban liveability assessments, originating from the development of urban planning as a profession and the proliferation of the garden suburb. Community Green uniquely connects the past, present and future of planning for small open spaces around the narrative of internal reserves. The distinctive planned spaces are typically enclosed on every side, hidden within residential blocks, serving as local pocket parks and reflecting the evolving values of community life from the garden city movement to contemporary new urbanism. This book resuscitates the enclosed, almost secretive reserve from history as a distinctive form of local open space whose problems and potentialities are relevant to many other green community spaces. In so doing, it opens up even wider connections between localism and globalism, the past and the future, and for connecting community initiatives to broader global challenges of cohesion, health, food, and climate change. This fully illustrated book charts the outcomes and implications of this evolution across several continents, injecting human stories of civic initiatives, struggles and triumphs along the way. Community Green will be of interest to a wide readership interested in studying, managing and improving the quality of all small open spaces in the urban landscape.

This text explores how architectural and urban design values have been co-opted by global cities to enhance their economic competitiveness by creating a superior built environment that is not just aesthetically memorable but more productive and sustainable. It focuses on the experience of central Sydney through its policy commitment to ‘design excellence’ and more particularly to mandatory competitive design processes for major private development. Framed within broader contexts that link it to comparable urban policy and design issues in the Asia-Pacific region and globally, it provides a scholarly but accessible volume that provides a balanced and critical overview of a policy that has changed the design culture, development expectations, public realm and skyline of central Sydney, raising issues surrounding the uneven distribution of benefits and costs, professional practice, representative democracy, and implications of globalization.

Urban Nation: Australia's Planning Heritage provides the first national survey of the historical impact of urban planning and design on the Australian landscape. This ambitious account looks at every state and territory from the earliest days of European settlement to the present day. It identifies and documents hundreds of places - parks, public spaces, redeveloped precincts, neighbourhoods, suburbs up to whole towns - that contribute to the distinctive character of urban and suburban Australia. It sets these significant planned landscapes within the broader context of both international design trends and Australian efforts at nation and city building.

Accessible and comprehensive, written by the current President of the International Planning History Society, this volume provides readers with a highly visual account of historical, contemporary and international projects. Looking at the ways in which the City Beautiful movement influenced the design and development of Australian cities, this pioneering national study surveys the ruling ideas, influences, outcomes and enduring legacies of the early artistic turn in Australian urban design. With the return of the American City Beautiful movement to the forefront of urban design, Designing Australia’s Cities is a relevant account of the ways in which this movement influenced and shaped Australian city design, but more importantly sheds light on a planning culture that stretches far beyond Australia and is of increasing relevance worldwide today. Laying bare an important design and reform movement, whose under-appreciated legacy is clearly evident in urban landscapes today, this book is ideal for students of planning, architecture, urban design and the history of planning.

Accessible and comprehensive, written by the current President of the International Planning History Society, this volume provides readers with a highly visual account of historical, contemporary and international projects. Looking at the ways in which the City Beautiful movement influenced the design and development of Australian cities, this pioneering national study surveys the ruling ideas, influences, outcomes and enduring legacies of the early artistic turn in Australian urban design. With the return of the American City Beautiful movement to the forefront of urban design, Designing Australia’s Cities is a relevant account of the ways in which this movement influenced and shaped Australian city design, but more importantly sheds light on a planning culture that stretches far beyond Australia and is of increasing relevance worldwide today. Laying bare an important design and reform movement, whose under-appreciated legacy is clearly evident in urban landscapes today, this book is ideal for students of planning, architecture, urban design and the history of planning.