Building Mixity! urban design award

Background: Approaches to post-industrial urban regeneration are oft-limited to Europe (City as Loft, Baum Christiaanse) and North America (Re-USA, Robiglio). They are not appropriate for Australian sites due to later gentrification, yet preserved industrial fabric and extreme foreign investment (Global Cities 2017 report). Our urban design research investigated how a local exemplar area could densify to respond to development pressures, resilience objectives, without losing post-industrial history and diversity.Contribution: Building on sense of place and community, the research investigated multiple transformative strategies to foster ‘mixity’. Historical investigations, community engagement/feedback, typological documentation, and a post-Global Financial Crisis economic framing infomed multifaceted urban-design research and activism. It encompassed propositions for public space and reduced-traffic networks, legal and economic frameworks encouraging reuse, transformation, programmatic diversity, and affordable business space inclusion to retain communities and diversities, while testing spatial design implications. Propositions were destined at professionals (designers, developers), and discussed with community groups, council and Mayor. They informed policies - the first mixed ‘Commercial 3’ zoning and Cremorne Place Implementation Plan.Significance: The research was shortlisted for the Australian Urban design awards, the nation’s premier awards for excellence innovation in urban design created by Prime Minister Keating’s Urban Design Taskforce. Nominated for Leadership Advocacy and Research, it showed at Hong Kong Business of Design Week, Asia’s premier design innovation event attended by 500’000. It was discussed on ABC radio National’s Blueprint for Living, a weekly cultural radio show by famous J. Green and in the ‘Designing Future Cities’ documentary. It led to the Kunshan collaborations with the CRC for water sensitive cities.