Going Glocal: A new era for public parks

The design of Sydney’s Blaxland Riverside Park is the result of the emerging phenomenon of online engagement between community and designers. How has this process evolved since Blaxland Riverside Park’s older sibling Bicentennial Park was opened twenty-five years ago?

In the evolution of urban parks, Bicentennial Park and the more recent Blaxland Riverside Park at Sydney Olympic Park are relative youngsters. While Bicentennial Park has steadily increased its number of visitors since 1988, becoming one of Sydney’s most popular urban parks, its younger sibling Blaxland Riverside Park has almost instantaneously established a strong local and international profile, driven largely by social media. This poses questions about social change, how communities now engage with “place” and how Australian urban parks are responding to changes in technology and visitor demography.

Bicentenial Park. New South Wales Public Works Department.

Bicentenial Park. New South Wales Public Works Department.

Image: Sydney Olympic Park Authority

Bicentennial Park celebrates a twenty-five-year milestone this year. A pioneer and leading project of its time and one of the first city regional parks to be constructed over remediated landfill and to incorporate threatened wetlands, the park is now managed as a precinct within a 430-hectare parkland network by the Sydney Olympic Park Authority (SOPA). Annual visitor levels have steadily grown to over 1.2 million visits per year. On most weekends and in school holiday periods, the park is at full capacity in terms of visitor demand for shade, shelter, BBQs, playspaces and parking.

Community connections with Bicentennial Park have been shaped by the quality of the experience of the physical setting (“place”) combined with a broad schedule of park activities (“program”). A major driver of place and program at Bicentennial Park has been environmental education programs, which now annually engage with over 20,000 primary and secondary school children. The park hosts events such as Australia Day and the end of Ramadan celebration and many smaller local events, fun runs, walks and cycling group activities that reflect the area’s cultural diversity and the park’s location in Sydney’s western heartlands. A “public memories” competition, with categories for favourite photography and stories, has attracted significant community interest.

Based on SOPA’s Master Plan 2030 vision, Bicentennial Park will need to adapt from being a traditional “drive-to” regional park to a growing role as a “park for locals,” with the projection of over 15,000 new residents and over 30,000 workers within walking distance of the town centre and 25,000 residents planned for the adjoining Rhodes West/Wentworth Point precincts.

Blaxland Riverside Park, on the other hand, is the newest of the parkland developments and is located in the northern parklands on the Parramatta River, some three kilometres from the Olympic Park town centre. The public profile of the precinct and acceptance by the community have been immediate in comparison to the response to the older Bicentennial Park. Visitor numbers have increased from a baseline of 150–300 per day (pre 2008) to around 4000–5000 visitors on peak days (2011–2013). By any measure, people are forming multiple new connections with this place.

From its inception, Blaxland Riverside Park has adopted a “place and program” approach, including commercial opportunities for food and beverage, art exhibitions, theatre programs, holiday activities, heritage tours and bike and Segway hire. More recent community engagement has been strongly driven by social media. SOPA actively monitors social media and since 2011 has tracked over 700 pieces of social media for Blaxland Riverside Park and 150,000 views of the park’s webpage.

Social media commentary from users of the first-stage playspace that opened in 2011 exerted influence over the project team working on the design of the second-stage playspace, which included play hills, a three-storey treehouse, an interactive water plaza, a kiosk, an amenities building and parking. Online responses “liked” the non-conventional site-planning approach and a more physically and mentally demanding play environment. There was also endorsement for soft surfacing and improved levels of thermal comfort. Surprisingly, posts were also received from a significant number of “virtual visitors” from South America and Europe, evidence of international connection with the park.

While social media “traffic” for Blaxland Riverside Park has stabilized, online community engagement in parklands is an emerging and persuasive phenomenon for designers, place managers and marketers of larger public projects. With Bicentennial Park firmly established as a valued place for recreation and a showcase for changing community attitudes to the environment, arguably Blaxland Riverside Park has become a benchmark for a new phenomenon – people connecting with place at a “glocal” level, which is simultaneously both local and global, through online connections with local communities and virtual visitors.

Bicentennial Park (opened 1988)
Lead designer and landscape architect: NSW Public Works Department
Project director: Lorna Harrison
Subsequent masterplanning and precinct designs: Clouston Associates, Spackman Mossop Michaels, JMD Design

Blaxland Riverside Park (regional playspace)
Design manager: SOPA
Lead designer and landscape architect: JMD DesignWater feature design: Waterforms International
Architect: Tonkin Zulaikha Greer
Earlier masterplanning and precinct design integrated into the regional playspace: Phillips Marler, Hargreaves Associates and Hassell

Source

Discussion

Published online: 7 Feb 2014
Words: David Martin, Andrew Ferris
Images: Ethan Rohloff

Issue

Landscape Architecture Australia, August 2013

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