agriculture
production
distribution
consumption
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2005 Brisbane
WEAVING AGRICULTURE Legier Stahl
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In the mind of the consumer, there is no connection between food choice and the surrounding landscape. This is problematic because local and regionally sourced meals entail four to 17 times less petroleum consumption and five to 17 times less carbon dioxide emissions than a meal bought from a conventional food chain. Is it possible to reorganize the existing food system as a way to shape the future pattern of the landscape? In this manner, we could connect people to their local food supply, preserve farmland, and introduce an alternative lifestyle to Brisbane.
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1 Existing food system 2 South East Queensland water + urban development HIGH QUALITY FARMLAND HIGH DEVELOPMENT PRESSURE URBAN LAND
3 A new food system 4 Brisbane argriculture 2005 5 Brisbane agriculture 2015 6 South East Queensland landscape + infrastructure RURAL URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE
7 Future: when agriculture is woven into the city 8 Shifting pattern of the landscape
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URBAN
EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE
RURAL
NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
PROPOSAL CU 43
the hard and soft infrastructure necessary to generate the competition and shared commercial yields that flow from it to make it the property hot spot real estate agents will tell you it is today. The more than $2 billion in public investment has been easily exceeded by the combined value of private-sector projects that have set and continue to set the bar in Brisbane for inner-city planning and design innovation. A publicly accountable development corporation able to think and act commercially, to take calculated investment and risk allocation through profit sharing and joint ventures, has maximized the public returns, financing reinvestment in new community infrastructure that may not have been possible through the competing annual budget process of local government. I would now like to move on to the challenge of place management. As I said at the outset, I was attracted to a role and to an organization that was beginning an evolutionary shift mirroring the maturation of the precinct itself, from one of making good places to making them work well— truly sustainable places, if you will. As a term, “place management� may be planner-speak, but it reveals an approach that has much to commend it. In practice it is not one thing or one task but a jigsaw of complementary pieces (actions) that, applied in the right way, combine to get the best out of the public environment that has already been created. The key point is that there are many players, each responsible for a piece but all having a common picture in their minds of what the desired qualities of a successful place are. Discreet security, attentive maintenance, creative marketing, good urban design, imaginative publicrealm activation, and strong relationships are the primary elements, and at South Bank we have restructured our approach to ensure that we maximize the return on our public-infrastructure investment. The trick is to stimulate the authentic and spontaneous experiences that for me are the hallmark of places that work well long after the designers have left. The all too common problem visible in many urban renewal precincts here and internationally is that award-winning buildings and public spaces, after the initial flurry of curious popular interest, are often then abandoned to somehow look after themselves on the assumption that postarchitecture, the citizenry will continue to come. I was fascinated by a recent survey of award-winning buildings and spaces built in the past 20 years throughout the U.K., which found that a significant percentage of
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