Resources
Discover a curated selection of the latest toolkits, guides, initiatives, and cutting-edge research centred around creating and sustaining vibrant public spaces.
Our Resources section serves as a dynamic repository, offering insights into the evolving landscape of placemaking, community engagement, and public space research. Explore a diverse range of topics, from ground-breaking projects to emerging trends, designed to inspire and inform.
Whether you're a city planner, designer, advocate, or enthusiast, delve into this rich collection about creating more inclusive, sustainable, and thriving public realms.
Toolkits & Guides
NSW Government Architect Biodiversity in Place Framework
A framework to improve urban biodiversity in NSW
NSW Government - Connecting with Country Framework
Good practice guidance on how to respond to Country in the planning, design and delivery of built environment projects in NSW
Accessible Beaches Directory
The most detailed directory listing of accessible beaches in Australia
Design guidance for green and thriving public spaces
Supporting cities to improve the provision and quality of their public spaces - by C40
NSW Public Spaces Charter
10 principles for quality public space that distil and reflect evidence based research, best practice and extensive consultation.
Safe Spaces: Understanding and enhancing safety and inclusion for diverse women
Toolkits 1, 2, and 3 - Griffith University
NSW Smart Public Spaces Guide
On the role of technology in delivering better public space outcomes for communities.
NSW Guide to Walkable Public Space
Ideas for open spaces, streets and public facilities.
Great Public Spaces Guide
Outlines an approach to place and seeks to help communities, industry, councils and state government take action in creating great public spaces.
NSW Guide to Activation
Designed to help councils, place managers, communities and government agencies take a place-based approach to public space activation.
City of Sydney: Greening Sydney Strategy
Storymaps to better understand the benefits of greening, how we measure and track greening over time, and where we need to be by 2050.
NSW Government - Safer Cities Program
Aimed at helping to improve perceptions of safety in our cities and towns, particularly for women, girls and gender diverse people.
NSW Government - Greener Places Framework
An urban green infrastructure design framework for New South Wales from the Government Architect NSW.
NSW Government - Walks Near Me
Search NSW with our free digital map and create your own walk.
Programs & Initiatives
UNSW PowerLab - Population Wellbeing and Environment Research Lab
The goal of the PowerLab is to enhance understandings of how people and equity orientated changes in urban environments can enable population wellbeing and human flourishing across the life course.
Cooling the Commons
An action research program that co-designs practices and infrastructures for accessible cool living in an age of urban heating.
Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC)
Contributing to understanding – and shaping transformations – in the way societies interact with energy, technology and the living environment.
Critical Path - Spaces for Street Dance
A research and feasibiity study project.
Monash University XYX Lab - Gender + Place
XYX Lab is a team of experienced design researchers exploring gender-sensitive design practices and theory.
Art/Play/Risk
New creative and scholarly research into public art’s role in the design and planning of intergenerational future cities.
The Urban Field Naturalist Project
A collaboration between design, digital and environmental humanities, and life sciences. The project provides resources to help people notice wildlife in urban environments, and turn these observations into shareable stories.
Parlour Collective: gender, equity, architecture.
A research-based advocacy organisation working to improve gender equity in architecture and the built environment professions.
Shadow Places Network
A network of scholars, artists and activists who collaborate to document, co-produce and reimagine connections between places and peoples in an era of climate change
Books & Reports
Planning for the inclusion of families with children in apartments
Policy Insights Paper Dr Sophie-May Kerr May 2024
The Urbanist Book Club - Setha Low 'Why Public Space Matters'
Podcast featuring Setha Low discussing her recent book on the public realm and why we should protect it.
Trauma Informed Placemaking
An introduction to understanding trauma and healing in place - edited by Cara Courage and Anita McKeown
Hot Cities: A Transdisciplinary Agenda
Shedding light on the future of urban spaces, this path-breaking book is a significant contribution to contemporary climate change scholarship.
ARUP - Queering Cities in Australia
‘How could we make public spaces more inclusive for LGBTIQ+ individuals, families and communities through better accommodation in policy and practice for local areas?’
