In 1972 artist Robert Ingpen, writing of Swan Hill’s Pioneer Folk Museum, suggested that “seeing how our forebears lived, we discover how they fitted themselves into the new land and established a balance which we must maintain for the sake of future generations.” For fifty years, the Museum has been a key element of the...

This paper explores the question of how urban parks function as urban icons. It examines Bicentennial Park in Homebush Bay, 12 km west of the Sydney Central Business District (CBD) as a case study. Bicentennial Park was planned and designed between 1983 and 1988, a time when Australia, and its cities in particular, grappled with...

Planning is a cultural activity, with the way we represent the spatial structure of cities reflecting our worldview. Within Aotearoa New Zealand, planning traditions and approaches practiced by indigenous Māori have been marginalized by colonial planning practices based in Western epistemology. However, Māori are promoting their planning traditions through strategic planning documents.

Australia’s major cities have long relied on large dams as their main source of water. These dams, including Warragamba, are household names in their own cities. Some cities are blessed with good quality catchment areas, most notably Sydney, while others, including Brisbane, have catchments compromised by agricultural pursuits and very little green space in their...

This paper uses nostalgia, and especially 'social nostalgia', as a key to exploring the impacts of changes in the caravanning landscape since the early part of the twentieth century, using the Gold Coast as a case study. It shows that whilst the caravanning landscape has changed there is a resurgence of nostalgia for the simplicity...