Some reflections on Beyond 2032

I spent the weekend after the ACA’s Beyond 2032: Brisbane’s Legacy event at the Queensland Art Gallery, enjoying a rosé in the sunshine and admiring Robyn Gibson’s high-quality building and landscape that have aged so beautifully with the population. And it struck me: this is exactly what the event was about.

The bravery to take a risk and create something that doesn’t simply serve its principal purpose, but transforms our public space, how we use it and, perhaps, how we behave as citizens within it.

The politicians, planners, public advocates, arts community, architects and myriad of other consultants planned for a population and cultural significance for Brisbane that didn’t even yet exist.

It’s there in the title, really. Despite their different areas of expertise, the speakers kept returning to a common point: Brisbane 2032 gives us a rare chance to use time, visibility and political will to shift from incremental improvements to structural change. Moderator Jacqueline MacLeod led off with the question: “Is Brisbane bold enough to recognise what our city needs?”

Sondra Roberts framed the scale of the opportunity. Brisbane is growing quickly, but growth itself is not the problem. The question is where it goes, how it is supported and what kind of city it creates. Her reminder that “people experience our cities at street level” stayed with me. Housing, transport and development cannot be treated as isolated exercises; each project should contribute something back to the street, the neighbourhood and the public realm.

Julie Saunders made clear that Brisbane is in a housing pickle. Her description of the missing middle was especially powerful: “That’s not a typology or a product, it’s a person.” These are working people increasingly unable to secure appropriate housing, while the costs of transport, time and access make affordable living even harder. With the exclusion of London where 1200 affordable homes were delivered the Games are traditionally bad for housing.  So we need deliberate levers, shared risk and the courage to increase density and diversity in well-connected locations.  Julie sees the NSW model of a levy applied to everyone in the development pipeline to create a pool for community housing providers as a viable lever to get momentum.

Gerard Reardon challenged the familiar promise of congestion busting. More road capacity is quickly absorbed, while car-based movement remains expensive, inefficient and unhealthy. His alternative was to focus on access rather than congestion, including density around transport, fewer parking incentives and a network of walkable spines.

Perhaps the most exciting idea was that the disruption of the Games could become a live experiment. What happens when streets close, people walk, cycle and use public transport, and neighbourhoods become places to gather rather than routes to pass through?

As an outsider to the process, time feels like the scarcest resource in this endeavour.  But I love the idea that we can take the time to trial closing streets, testing pop ups in the villages of this city, throw a few brave new ideas at this city and see what sticks and what we as the community choose to embrace.

The ambition should not be to host a great party while locals flee the city. It should be to throw a great party that Brisbane enjoys with its visitors—and use it to permanently improve how we connect suburbs, access housing, move through the city and experience public life.

A city only gets a few chances like this. Fingers crossed we are bold enough to recognise ours.