Parks & Leisure 25.1

parks &leisure AUSTRALAS IAN

Volume 25.1 Autumn 2022 ISSN: 1446-5604

Community & Urban Planning

TRENDS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS

PARTNERING ON PLAY A FRAMEWORK FOR URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

LIVING SEAWALLS WHY SOCIETY NEEDS NATURE

Creating the 4th Space

Project: New Norfolk Esplanade, TAS Derwent Valley Council

CONTENTS FEATURES

37 WA Expansion Supports Reciprocal Learnings

8 Developing a Framework for Urban Green Infrastructure 10 Apple Fun Park 12 Living Seawalls 13 A New Look for New Norfolk 14 Design for Play 16 The Social Impact of the National Aquatic Industry 20 Multilingual Playground Signage 22 From Playing to Planning to a PhD 24 Trends and Future Directions 28 Victoria Park Vision 32 Partnering on Play 35 Creating Environmentally Friendly & Cost-efficient Greenspace

INTERNATIONAL 38 39 42 43 44

International News A New Path Multigenerational Facilities Paths for All Why Society Needs Nature

REGULARS 4 From the PLA President and CEO 6 From the Recreation Aotearoa Chair and CEO 46 PLA Advisory 47 Book Reviews 47 Courses & Events 48 Research Connections 50 Join Us on Social Media

08 10

12

PRODUCTION EDITOR Nicole Mulloy nmulloy@umco.com.au EDITORIAL COORDINATOR John Senior journal@parksleisure.com.au EDITORIAL & PRODUCTION MANAGER Shireen Dawankar marketing@parksleisure.com.au DESIGNER Malinda Hadiwidjojo SALES/ACCOUNT MANAGERS Antonia Bewley (NSW, QLD & WA) 0418 424 410 Pilar Danlag (VIC & SA) 0414 468 243

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Martha Rubazewicz ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Ellie Busby

CIRCULATION BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Mark McTaggart CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kate Podger

CHAIRMAN/CEO Prema Perera PUBLISHER Janice Williams CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Vicky Mahadeva ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Emma Perera

COVER IMAGE Victoria Park Vision Brisbane City Council

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Phone (02) 9805 0399, Fax (02) 9805 0714. Melbourne office, Suite 4 Level 1, 150 Albert Road, South Melbourne 3205 Phone (03) 9694 6444, Fax (03) 9699 7890. Printed by KHL Printing Co Pte Ltd, Singapore. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. The publishers believe all the information supplied in this book to be correct at the time of printing. They are not, however, in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. Prices, addresses and phone numbers were, after investigation, and to the best of our knowledge and belief, up to date at the time of printing, but the shifting sands of time may change them in some cases. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements which appear in this publication comply with the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) and the Australian Law. The responsibility must therefore be on the person, company or advertising agency submitting the advertisements for publication. While every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy, the publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions.

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Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 3

FROM THE PLA PRESIDENT

I

LES MUNN

t is with mixed feelings of excitement and humility that I find myself in the position of National President of such a wonderful organisation as Parks and Leisure Australia; an organisation that I am very passionate about and one that achieves so much for so many across our great country.

I first joined the Royal Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation (RAIPR) in 1982 and was present at the birth of Parks & leisure Australia (PLA) in 1997, when RAIPR merged with the Australian Recreation Industry to form PLA. I step in to a position vacated by a person who has worked tirelessly for our organisation over the past 3 years. Thank you Paul Jane for your commitment and

leadership over the course of your term.

Luckily for us, Paul will stay on for a further 12 months developing new international partnerships and reviewing our organisational structure.

I would also like to thank our National Board. These people give generously of their time to ensure PLA continues to grow and flourish. It has been an extremely challenging two years as you would all be aware, but rest assured these people will continue to give of their best to ensure that our organisation makes a successful recovery. We’re all looking confidently to a much better year.

Les Munn PLA President

FROM THE PLA CEO

MARK BAND

T

his is our first Journal of 2022 and I hope it finds you well, with an air of optimism moving forward as we all try to rebuild from the impacts of Covid-19 and its many variants. Times are certainly challenging and dynamic, and at the time of writing this article we were relaxing restrictions with caution — but who knows what lies ahead. All I can say is that as a national association, we are trying extremely hard to plan for our future by

continuing to service you and the industry within our means.

Our national sponsors and partners have been amazing in their continued support and we hope to repay them this year with a magnificent national conference planned for the Centrepiece at Melbourne Park. We can’t wait to get together face-to-face again, and what an incredible venue and city to do it in.

While Melbourne and Victoria have been some of the most affected areas in the country, it’s also where the majority of our members are. Therefore, by holding the conference here, it is our way of showing our support for the city and state as a place where we can come together for our flagship event and Gala Awards ceremony on 16-19 October. I for one am looking forward to reconnecting with you all and hopefully you’ll be able to do the same, so please put the date in your diaries.

In other news, PLA has signed an MOU with our Canadian counterparts, the Canadian Recreation and Parks Association (CRPA), and we look forward to establishing strong links through regular catch-ups with them and our American

We thank our national sponsors and partners:

4 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

colleagues at the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA), with whom we also have a formal MOU. I’d also like to congratulate Adelaide and the Greening Adelaide team who have been successful in being recognised as the world’s second National Park City (first in Australia), next to London in the UK. This is a great achievement and puts Adelaide on the map for its great spaces and places, not to mention the importance of parks in the fabric of Australia’s most liveable city.

We look forward to working with Green Adelaide on the initiative and hopefully getting more of our amazing Australian cities on board.

In closing, I’d like to thank the outgoing PLA President, Paul Jane, for his commitment and work over the past three years. The Board have been instrumental in the sustainability of the organisation through the pandemic, led by Paul, and I personally thank him for his leadership. I welcome in Les Munn as his replacement.

Keep up your great work and enjoy the upcoming cooler months.

Mark Band PLA CEO

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FROM THE RECREATION AOTEAROA CHAIR

MARK BOWATER

K

ia ora koutou. Welcome to the autumn edition of the Australasian Parks & Leisure Journal.

Hope. A new year. A new perspective.

The last year has been a tough one for most of us, in so many ways. We have all been affected one way or another by the Covid-19 pandemic and its variants as it has wreaked havoc around the world. And it’s not over! However, we are largely in a very different space to where we were a year ago, and better equipped to live with and manage our “new normal”.

Within Recreation Aotearoa, as we have continued to develop a

measurement framework for our new bicultural strategic plan, we have had many conversations about better understanding a Māori world view of recreation, climate change and health and wellbeing. I’ll share some of my perspectives on that. By considering more traditional perspectives through matauranga Māori, we consider that there is an inextricable link between tangata (people), whenua (place) and taiao (nature), a wider systemic ecosystem where we need to live in harmony and balance with the environment.

When we pollute and degrade our environment, it ultimately affects our health and wellbeing. What we do upstream affects us downstream. I think Covid-19 has been a catalyst for us in a number of ways. It has encouraged us to think about the relationship between the environment and people, as many of us have relied on our connection to nature through parks and greenspaces as we have endured lockdowns, social distancing, and a very uncertain world. It has encouraged us to think about how important healthy natural environments are, for our time in them, and for the positive benefits on our health and wellbeing.

If we now strive for a future that is richer, healthier and more abundant through the evolution of natural, cultural, social and economic systems, then we are moving towards a regenerative system where we can better balance dense populations with thriving economies, communities and environments.

Covid-19 has taught us a lot about resilience, looking out for each other, dealing with uncertainty, leadership, the importance of connections and networks, about taking care of ourselves, about being active, and about being connected to nature. It has shown us that we need to invest in maintaining ecosystems that will sustain our urban populations, for community health, resilience and connectivity, and that we need to focus on equitable access for all.

We need to take these learnings forward now, as we may never revert back fully to how life was pre-Covid.

Make sure you stop and smell the roses!

Noho ora mai (stay well).

Mark Bowater Recreation Aotearoa Chair

FROM THE RECREATION AOTEAROA CEO

I

ANDREW LESLIE

t’s hard to believe that we’re already a few months into 2022. I hope that you’ve all settled into your work and have some interesting projects and events ahead of you.

At Recreation Aotearoa we’re starting to ramp up planning and promotion of our sector conferences. We have Green Pavlova in May for the parks, play and open spaces sector; in August we’ll be hosting the Waves Conference, for New Zealand’s aquatics professionals; the Recreation Conference in November we have two of these under our belt for 2022, having just come off the back of one in February) — and we have a series of outdoor hui (gatherings) taking place around the motu (country/island). All of this barely scratches the surface of what Recreation Aotearoa has on in the coming months.

Another significant piece of work currently underway is the Strengthen and Adapt project. Borne out of funding through Sport NZ, this project has given us a valuable opportunity to investigate

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and explore the future of recreation for Aotearoa (New Zealand).

This funding allows us the chance to further embody and uphold our Te Whai Oranga strategic vision, which is to ReCreate a Nation, in line with Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi). We are working with our members to uncover key focus areas and initiatives that could transform Recreation Aotearoa into a body that can more effectively deliver quality recreation experiences for all tāngata (people).

Recreation is vital to the wellbeing of our communities, and we understand that there are diverse needs and desires when it comes to partaking in recreation.

We feel incredibly lucky to be a part of the movement working towards recreation for all.

Take care over the next few months and I look forward to updating you again on Recreation Aotearoa and recreation in Aotearoa. Noho ora mai (stay well).

Andrew Leslie Recreation Aotearoa CEO

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DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE WORDS SAMANTHA SMITH, COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, STANDARDS AUSTRALIA

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s parts of Australia and New Zealand continue to enter in and out of Covid-19 lockdowns, we have been more reliant than ever on our outdoor spaces as settings for relaxation and activity. With this growing reliance on outdoor spaces and denser populations, it’s crucial that urban infrastructures are developed to keep cool as the effects of climate change increase.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth report, New Zealand and Australia’s land areas have warmed by around 1.1 and 1.4 degrees Celsius respectively since 1910. The report also reveals worldwide temperatures will increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2035 if there is no intervention.

Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) has been identified as key to building cities’ resilience to the climate crisis. With this in mind, Standards Australia has kicked off a project to develop a handbook on Urban Green Infrastructure to define consistent terminology and introduce a uniform framework.

Research has found that greenspaces contribute to decreased health care costs, crime reduction, and increased health improvement and conservation of remnant vegetation.

Numerous and recent reviews of research have indicated a direct relationship between the facilitation of physical activity and greenspaces, and higher levels of urban greenspaces have been associated with lower levels of obesity. In recent years there has been a surge in research around the link between improved mental health and exposure to nature. Access to greenspaces has had positive effects on depression, anxiety and mood disorders, improved sleep, reduced stress and increased happiness, while decreasing negative emotions.

Additional research has shown that nature increases mental cognition.

In Australia, we are already experiencing the side effects of climate change. On 4 January 2020, the Sydney

suburb of Penrith was officially the hottest place in the world that day, hitting 48.9 degrees Celsius. The year before, in 2019, was Australia’s warmest year on record, and the country entered a state of emergency with catastrophic bushfires sweeping the nation. Linked to climate change, the fires were exacerbated by drought and intense heat.

Outside of Australia, global city centres will see an increase in temperatures by more than four degrees Celsius by 2100. This is due to energy emitted from densely populated people, cars and public transport emissions, and the heat retained from buildings and other infrastructure.

While cities take up only three percent of the earth’s surface, more than half the world’s population live in urban areas, which is only more reason to plan for better outdoor spaces.

It is vital that infrastructure planning incorporates UGI to cool down urban spaces to ensure liveable, sustainable and resilient cities. UGI is an industry dedicated to reducing heat in urban areas by providing greener and shadier infrastructure, whether through the introduction of tree canopies, parks, yards or more.

Governments across Australia are looking to combat urban heat through policy and plans, such as Canberra’s Living Infrastructure Plan; Cooling the City and NSW’s Greener Places. By 2045, Canberra aims to have 30 percent of its urban environment covered by various green infrastructure such as tree canopies or green roofs, shrub beds, wetlands and rain gardens. New South Wales aims to increase its tree canopy and green cover across Greater Sydney by one million trees by 2022.

While UGI is identified and supported by the Australian Government as one of the best weapons against climate change, clear definitions and a national framework is lacking. Standards Australia committee PC-002, HB Urban Green Infrastructure

8 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

Framework, is currently developing part one of a UGI Handbook.

This handbook will be uniquely Australian and provide nationally consistent definitions of terminology and frameworks for planning and designing urban green infrastructure.

The framework aims to guide planners and practitioners on best practice when incorporating UGI into their work. Common UGI types will be covered, including urban canopy, green roofs, green walls, parks and reserves, waterways and nature reserves.

“The use of UGI to mitigate the negative impacts of urban heat, improve the wellbeing of local communities, save energy, increase property value and extend the life of infrastructure is well established. Yet, Australia has no national framework that explains best practice for designing, implementing, protecting and maintaining UGI,” said Ben Stockwin, Project Committee Chair of PC-002, HB Urban Green Infrastructure Framework.

“Developing a consistent methodology for UGI that can be applied across Australia is vital as significant investments are made now to build more climate-resilient communities, towns and cities for tomorrow.”

The handbook is currently in the drafting stage, with the project committee providing technical content to write the handbook. Following this, the Handbook will enter the peer review stage. This stage will allow for the draft document to be reviewed by technical experts. The peer review stage ends once agreement has been reached on any required changes.

There are many benefits of UGI, and Standards Australia’s focus on developing a UGI specific handbook will provide nationally consistent definitions and terminology and introduce a uniform framework to guide planners and practitioners on how to incorporate UGI into a wide range of infrastructure projects.

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APPLE FUN PARK WORDS NATHAN LEE, GENERAL MANAGER, WILLPLAY

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ne of the most iconic playspaces in Western Australia, Apple Fun Park, has had a major upgrade

by WillPlay’s WA distributor, Active Discovery. Located in the heart of Donnybrook, this local attraction has become a destination park offering a whole lot of family fun.

Originally opened in 2008, Donnybrook Apple Fun Park has a proud history, beginning when a generous local family provided the funds to enable the construction of the first Donnybrook Apple Fun Park on this site. The iconic playground was the biggest free-entry playspace in Australia for a number of years, serving as a huge draw card for people of all ages and abilities to stop and explore Donnybrook, which resulted in a boost to the local economy.

As the years went on, the well-loved playspace fell into disrepair and was in dire need of revitalisation. In 2019, the Shire of Donnybrook-Balingup secured a $1.5 million grant under the Federal Government’s Building Better Regions Fund to upgrade the park. It was through this process that Active Discovery was

selected to carry out a full design and reconstruction of this dynamic space.

The new design was inspired by the history of the local Donnybrook area.

Incorporation of historic elements such as the railway, gold mining, timber industry, sandstone quarry, and the rich agricultural canvas of the surrounding area were all strategically entwined and represented in the new playspace.

The central iconic element of this space is the huge apple crate tower designed and manufactured in Australia by WillPlay. The tower features a suspended net bridge, BIG slides, challenging rope climbs and an array of other play opportunities, not to mention a great view of the town from the top level. Custom feature lighting has been incorporated into the main tower to top off an inspired design.

Featuring elements from WillPlay‘s Goliath Tower and Giant Treehouse ranges — which both feature unlimited façade and colour options — the apple Fun Park tower was designed to reflect the fun nature of the park and pay homage to the local history of the region.

10 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

With the giant tower clearly visible from the main road into Donnybrook, it is hard for passersby to resist stopping to discover the vast array of things to explore in the area. The apple crate tower is complemented by a hot new favourite in the WillPlay collection — the giant Apple Spinning Orb. The Spinning Orb is fun for all ages and offers a multitude of spinning and climbing options in a funky looking design.

Built to last for a generation, all WillPlay equipment features extensive use of aluminium structural posts, stainless-steel rails and frames, and recycled plastics and timber composites.

Designed in Australia for Australian conditions, WillPlay equipment comes with a lifetime structural warranty.

Proudly designed and manufactured in Australia by Willplay, the Apple Fun Park play elements are built to last, ensuring the Donnybrook community and visitors to the area many years of FUN!

This great project by Active Discovery and WillPlay for the Shire of Donnybrook-Balingup is just one of many. To view more inspiring sites visit willplay.com.au, call 1300 132 047, or email info@willplay.com.au

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 11

LIVING SEAWALLS REVIVING OUR OCEANS BY BRINGING MARINE LIFE BACK TO URBAN STRUCTURES WORDS LIVING SEAWALLS TEAM — UNIVERSITY OF NSW, MACQUARIE UNI, SYDNEY INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE & REEF DESIGN LAB

L

iving Seawalls is revolutionising the way we build in our oceans.

Through innovative design that combines ecological and engineering expertise with artistic design, we have developed an adaptable and affordable mechanism of bringing marine life back to coastal developments in the most urbanised places in the world.

The Living Seawalls project addresses the growing, but often overlooked, contribution of marine-built structures to biodiversity loss in our oceans. The growing human population is rapidly increasing its environmental footprint.

This is partly due to a construction boom in our seas. Marine infrastructure now modifies an area of seafloor that is greater than the area of the world’s mangrove forests and seagrass beds combined. With rising sea-levels and the shift to offshore renewable energy, construction will increase worldwide.

We are building more than ever, not only to protect our shorelines but also to support recreation and the blue economy. In Sydney Harbour, where the first Living Seawalls were established, over 50 percent of the shoreline is seawall. This shoreline modification comes at the expense of natural habitats.

The problem is that compared to the natural habitats they replace, artificial structures support reduced biodiversity, and consequently provide fewer important ecosystem services on which humans rely, such as fisheries production.

This is in part because these structures often have flat surfaces that provide little protection to marine life from predators and environmental stressors.

Living Seawalls have developed a solution for returning marine life to the thousands of kilometres of concrete coastlines worldwide by designing with rather than against nature.

Living Seawalls is a flagship program of the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and combines ecological expertise from the University of NSW and Macquarie University with industrial design expertise from Alex Goad of Reef Design Lab. We also foster future generations of scientists by supporting post-graduate students in their research.

Taking advantage of technological advances in 3D-printing, we have

created modular habitat panels that mimic natural marine features such as rock pools, crevices, ledges and sponge gardens. The complex geometries of the panels increase the habitat area for growth of seaweed, shellfish and other marine life. They also provide shelter to marine life from high temperatures and predators. To date we have developed 10 different panel designs targeting different environments and species.

Our habitat panels are modular, can be fitted to structures of varying sizes, and can be fabricated from upcycled materials.

Following the first installation, sponsored by Volvo Cars Australia in 2018, we have successfully partnered with five local governments to install Living Seawalls panels on 11 seawalls in Sydney. We also collaborated with the multinational construction and property firm Lendlease to produce an underwater garden at Barangaroo. This significant urban renewal site aims to be the first precinct globally to be carbon neutral.

Installations have also been completed in three other major Australian cities as well as internationally.

Living Seawalls are currently installed in Singapore, Gibraltar and Wales, with more international locations on the way.

Importantly, Living Seawalls is driven by science and builds on more than 20 years of research. Our accompanying scientific research program has demonstrated that Living Seawalls enhance seaweed, fish and invertebrates after as little as one year.

At all sites we have seen rapid colonisation of the panels by mobile invertebrates such as snails and crabs, followed by filter feeding oysters, barnacles and mussels, as well as seaweeds.

The species enhanced by Living Seawalls include oysters, that can clean the water through their feeding, and kelp that provides food and habitat to many invertebrates and fish. As further time passes, the panels, which are designed to last at least 20 years, will likely accumulate even more species.

Our installations are accompanied by an extensive outreach program, generating public awareness and stewardship of blue space. This includes an active program of seminars, panel discussions and workshops. Additionally, Living Seawalls panels have been displayed in museums around the world.

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Maria Vozzo, Sawmillers Reserve, McMahons Point

Partnerships with local government, industry and community have been instrumental in the establishment of demonstration sites and expanding the Living Seawalls to new locations.

Partnerships with community advocates have also been integral to our program.

The success of our Living Seawalls program in achieving change through on-ground action and education was recognised with our selection as a finalist for Prince William’s 2021 Earthshot Prize, and as the winner of the Banksia Foundation’s 2021 Biodiversity Award in the NSW Sustainability Awards.

A key challenge for early Living Seawalls installations was unsupportive policy and management frameworks.

We overcame permitting and planning impediments by working closely with local governments and the NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces to reclassify Living Seawalls as restoration works. Additionally, we developed guiding principles and step-by-step guidelines for planning and constructing ecofriendly foreshore developments. We also developed frameworks for designing marine structures to reduce pest species invasions and increase the resilience of marine ecosystems to climate change.

Humans have profoundly modified marine ecosystems. Coastal construction is forecast to expand up to 76 percent in the next 25 years, therefore, we need to act now. Living Seawalls provides a solution to ensure marine structures are created, repaired or rebuilt to benefit both humans and nature. Our vision is to ensure no new development proceeds without co-design for nature. Find out more at livingseawalls.com.au

The Living Seawalls team

A NEW LOOK FOR NEW NORFOLK PARK INFRASTRUCTURE SPECIALISTS HAVE HELPED REVITALISE THE OUTDATED RIVERSIDE ESPLANADE OF REGIONAL TASMANIAN TOWN NEW NORFOLK WORDS GRILLEX

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ituated 35 kilometres upstream from Hobart in the Derwent Valley, New Norfolk is home to around 6000 Australians and acts as an integral service hub for residents, surrounding smaller towns and rural areas.

The Esplanade is a major asset to the community as it functions as a safe space for play, social gatherings, exercise, rest, festivals and other events. It connects many valuable community assets such as walking tracks, a campground, the town pool and facilities for youth and community groups.

Derwent Valley Council recognised the park had lost its appeal to the public due to facilities becoming aged and redundant, and were not meeting the expectations for community growth.

They were able to secure funding for an upgrade and worked with park infrastructure specialists Grillex to select quality park infrastructure that would help upgrade their facilities, visually enrich the area and encourage more foot traffic.

Derwent Valley Council specified Grillex’s Contour barbecues powdercoated in Deep Ocean blue, which are part of the Easy-Access range. This means the New Norfolk and surrounding community have

access to all-inclusive DDA-certified, wheelchair accessible barbecues.

These barbecues are also fitted with Grillex’s industry-leading hotplate, which features a four-prong heating element to provide an edge-to-edge, even cooking surface — the first of its kind on the Australian market.

The contour barbecues were installed underneath Grillex Akora Skillion Shelters to provide a weather-proof cooking area and shade to families as their children interact with park equipment and the natural surroundings. The shelters were powdercoated in Surfmist to brighten the park and make them stand out, with a Timberimage screen added as an added visual element.

Streetstyle table settings with wheelchair accessibility were placed beneath the shelters to help form an inclusive environment for park users.

Streetstyle park seats and benches were also been used as resting places along the Esplanade. All of the frames were powdercoated in Deep Ocean blue, with slats in Western Red Cedar Timberimage to acknowledge the river and blend in with the natural surroundings respectively.

To ensure adequate hydration for park users, an Eco-Drinking Fountain

was also supplied by Grillex, with a dog bowl attachment. The fountain was powdercoated in a bright, French Blue so that it can be easily located. The fountain encourages the use of reusable water bottles.

Matt Richardson from Grillex, who worked closely with Derwent Valley Council, spoke about his experience on this project. “I was privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team at Derwent Valley Council on this project.

Together we were able to select products that will serve the community well into the future, and provide a positive experience for all park users. These new assets will increase the use of the Esplanade, reaffirming it as the prime social destination for the New Norfolk community and surrounding area.”

ABOUT GRILLEX Grillex collaborate, design, and deliver parks built on the four principles of health, sustainability, technology, and inclusiveness. For over 30 years Grillex have been trusted partners with landscape architecture, design, and construction companies to provide open space solutions for their projects.

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 13

Potter Children’s Garden, Parana Park, Hamilton. Image Jill Rice Children at play in the natural environment.

Image Jill Rice

DESIGN FOR PLAY WORDS JILL RICE

I

have always believed that children don’t need to be told how to do most things, they watch and learn from others, they figure it out! What they do need is time and opportunities to explore their world, and options for engaging with it — lots of opportunities, lots of options — to stimulate their innate curiosity and drive to explore and learn. A supportive adult/sibling to take an interest and offer encouragement is also useful.

As a child, play for me had nothing to do with play equipment. Play had everything to do with learning to navigate the environment, to know and push the boundaries. A lot of it was about learning to manage my own relationships with friends and siblings. We grew things, made things, made up our own games and adventures. My parents were teachers, and fully supportive of our freedoms and all of our endeavours.

The reality, however, is that not all children have the same access to environments in which there are a rich source of play opportunities and resources, nor do all children have supportive adults in their worlds. There is definitely a need to plan for play in order to ensure equity and freedom of access to play opportunities.

To play is a child’s fundamental right.

THE ROLE OF THE ADULT Through my own play design journey, I have learned that what children need is not so much completed structures for play but rather scaffolding or provocation, so that children can continue the construction (or destruction) themselves, in a way that they choose. Like good parents and great teachers do, it is about offering children choices, observing them as they follow their own interests, and engaging with children, not instructing them about what to do and what not to do.

Our role as play enablers for children is to offer affordances for the kind of play

that is the child’s innate drive and their right to do. An affordance is what a user can do with an object based on the user’s capabilities. An affordance is a possibility.

It is not our role to dictate how spaces and resources are used or even to give permission. The child will make discoveries and play in ways that the adult designers have not even imagined. Children and youth need to be in charge of their own play, supported by adults who understand their innate drive to play.

The issue is that not all those involved in creating these opportunities to play agree on the “what” and “how” of play, so the possibilities available to children and youth can be limited by adult’s limited perceptions of play “provision”.

While educators in Aotearoa (New Zealand) have long been aware that the desire to play and explore is innate in children, they can sometimes confuse “play” and “learning”, so that instead of play being truly child-driven and for no particular outcome, it becomes a “tool” to achieve adult constructed measurable goals.

City planners have not always understood the importance of self-directed and freely chosen play to children and youth, and often give priority to the built environment, including constructed playgrounds, rather than to all the spaces in between where play can happen.

Sometimes they have stood in the way of children’s use of both natural and urban spaces for their play, applying rules as a blunt instrument to protect the environment, ensure people’s safety or avoid liability. They have missed opportunities to support the need children have to connect with nature, to test their own limits and to play in their own way.

Playground designers have not always appreciated the need to provide environments that invite play rather than play structures, or the wide variety of cultural understandings about play.

Children can and will play wherever they are, within their own families and cultural

14 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

communities, given the opportunity and the right environment.

In designing for play, what we need to be asking children and youth is not so much what equipment would they like to have in their playspace, but rather to ask them how they connect to a place. How do you like to play? How can we support your play in this place? The whole city, or country, is their playground, so it is about co-designing with them their backyards, their neighbourhoods, their schools, their streets, their parks, to be places where they can play in the way that they choose.

THE ROLE OF THE ENVIRONMENT The best play environments offer opportunities and encouragement for children to build, to experiment, make mistakes, make messes and take risks.

They offer affordances for self-directed, experiential learning in environments that are rich in relationships. They provide different spaces and lots of different materials for children to be able to change, rearrange and engage with their own physical environments. They offer open-ended outcomes, not finished products with a guidebook on how to use them or a measuring stick to determine the child’s success.

As Gandini from the Reggio Emilia school of thought said back in the 1990s, “Children are rich, powerful and competent.” (Gandini, 1993) Given the right environment, children have the power to create their own play.

On the positive side, there has been growing acknowledgement of the importance of connection with nature for all of us. The term “nature deficit disorder” was first coined in 2005 by Richard Louv; the new generation of doctors have “nature prescriptions” in their toolkit when addressing issues around health and wellbeing.

The last decade has seen a huge move towards promoting “natural” playspaces.

In Aotearoa, a return to ideas championed

through the NZ Playcentre Movement from 1948 that centres on offering loose parts and natural resources for play. The role of the designer and planner has become less about designing and installing play structures and more about setting the stage for play to happen, incorporating nature to provide a wealth of resources for creative and constructive play, risky play and physical challenge.

As past president of IPA World, Professor Robin Moore said, “Natural settings stimulate all the senses and integrate informal play with formal learning.”

I have learned from teachers that a natural environment generates more talk, questions and conversations between children, and is therefore good for their language development as they figure out together how to negotiate different surfaces or reach new heights.

However, regarding nature merely as a resource for learning is a very Euro-centric way of thinking.

TOWARDS A BICULTURAL APPROACH For indigenous people who have lived on these lands for many centuries, there is a much deeper connection with the natural environment and a respect based on that connection. Playspace planning is further

enriched by exploring these connections, uncovering the layers of memory, the histories laid down beneath the surface of a place over centuries of environmental and cultural change, and bringing those histories to life.

These stories provide the opportunity to stimulate the natural curiosity of children, to facilitate a memorable connection with the natural world and to see themselves as part of that history.

A child’s enjoyment of a particular place has a lot to do with experiencing what is unique about that place.

For example, The Potter Children’s Garden in Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) was designed to express local culture and ecology through the design of various play elements and play opportunities, which provided engagement with the natural features already evident in the space.

and connection to their community, their landscape, their world.

What is needed is a child-led/youthcentred localised approach to planning for play that respectfully considers both the tangata (people) and the whenua (places) where our children play, and to avoid assuming that the environment is merely an object, a resource for our own use. The interconnectedness of people (ngā tangata) with the places (ngā whenua) that we inhabit sustain our relationships and cultural histories across generations.

REFERENCES •

Te Whariki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa Early childhood curriculum educate.ece.govt. nz/learning/curriculumAndLearning/ TeWhariki.aspx

•

Gandini, L.(1993) Fundamentals of

CONCLUSION

the Reggio Emilia approach to early

Recognising that children are the experts on their play, our approach needs to be about empowering children and their communities to decide what kind of play opportunities they want and providing affordances to play. Involving children in the planning for play in mana-enhancing ways will result in greater wellbeing of our children, and a greater sense of belonging

childhood education. Young Children, 49 (1), 4-8.

•

Moore, Robin C. (1997). The need for nature: A childhood right. Children And The Environment 24(3)69, 203-220.

•

United Nations. (1989). Convention on the rights of the child. [New York (NY)]: United Nations;

•

ohchr.org/english/law/

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THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF THE NATIONAL AQUATIC INDUSTRY A COLLABORATION BETWEEN SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, ROYAL LIFE SAVING SOCIETY AND ROYAL LIFE SAVING SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA WORDS PROFESSOR EMMA SHERRY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ADAM KARG, DR RYAN STORR, DR CARLEIGH SYMONS & RJ HOUSTON (RLSSA)

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ustralia’s public aquatic facilities and commercial swim schools generate significant benefits to the community. In total, there are over 2100 aquatic facilities and swim schools across the country, with 89 percent of Australians living within a 20 minute drive to their local swimming pool (PwC, 2021). Over half (58%) of these facilities are located outside of major cities and attract over 330 million visits per year (AusPlay, 2020).

In understanding and conceptualising the benefits of these venues, economic, health and social impacts are noted to total over $9 billion in value annually (PwC, 2021). While the financial value of the quantifiable economic and health benefits are more tangible and defined, a detailed understanding of the more difficult to quantify social impacts created by the aquatic industry, and the infrastructure, workforce and programming that supports increased social outcomes, are less well known.

Significant research has been conducted into the quantifiable social benefits of aquatic facilities and swim schools as well as the state of the physical infrastructure as it exists today.

While this research has been important in understanding what exists now, it does not necessarily deliver insights into what could be or, equally importantly, how to maximise social outcomes within existing infrastructure constrains.

This project seeks to identify and articulate how aquatic facilities and swim schools can fully realise their maximum social impact potential and also provides a framework for social infrastructure that can be leveraged to support physical infrastructure. As such, this research focused specifically on the social value created by and social impact of aquatic facilities with and for the Australian community.

To identify and report on social impacts, this study was conducted in two stages:

16 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

1. Aquatic Industry Survey/Audit | An online aquatic industry survey/audit tool was developed and distributed to identified sites or programs across a nationally representative sample. This survey collected operational information from 78 sites across Australia to identify types of programming, facilities, members, casual users, and other business and community level data relevant to aquatic facilities and swim schools.

2. Qualitative Social Impact Interviews | Twenty-eight individual participants were interviewed from across Australia representing over 110 facilities, including facility owners, facility management and facility users. The qualitative research approach was developed to assess and contextualise detailed narrative case studies of social value and social impact, and identify the people, places, programs and policies central to aquatic facility infrastructure provided by these facilities and their communities.

Overall, the aquatic facilities studied provided diverse community members the opportunity to interact and engage with other people in their community, providing opportunities to foster social connections and relationships, which significantly improves the health and wellbeing of their users.

Theme 1: Health & Wellbeing | This theme related to the various benefits to people’s health and wellbeing, including mental, functional and physical health, created through participation in activities at the facility (physical and social).

Our analysis identified that aquatic facilities and their programs provide places and programs that encourage all types of health (physical, mental and functional). In addition to the obvious physical fitness that can be created by programs such as aqua aerobics and lap swimming, targeted programming for specific groups, such as people with a disability, can extend these benefits to those who may be less able to participate in traditional lap swimming.

Theme 2: Social Connection | This related to the various opportunities to connect with other people through and at the facility, fostering relationships and social support, especially for vulnerable members of the community.

Our analysis identified that aquatic facilities and their programs can play a critical role in creating social connection and reducing social isolation for at-risk members of our community. For some aquatic facility

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users, the pool or program may be their only opportunity for regular and genuine social interaction.

Theme 3: Safety & Education | This focused on the social impacts created through learn-to-swim programs and education, and what this meant for those in the community.

Aquatic facilities and swim schools prepare the community for many of the wider aquatic experiences that form part of the Australian way of life. Without learning to swim in a safe environment, Australians do not have the opportunity to build confidence and competency in controlled environments and are more likely to be at risk in open-water environments. Aquatic facilities can also play a role in providing a safe space for those needing help or assistance, and can act as a community hub for access to other community services (eg. health practitioners, council programs, emergency relief).

Theme 4: Social Cohesion | This theme related to the impact on social cohesion within communities, whereby diverse community members learned about others, promoting cohesion and citizenship towards others.

These results show that aquatic facilities and swim schools are important in fostering social cohesion. They create public spaces where people of different cultures and backgrounds can mix and interact in a positive environment, centred on community.

These micro-interactions between staff and the community, and between the community members themselves, works to create new and stronger connections between people who may not otherwise meet or engage with each other. Each of these interactions works to increase understanding of difference between ages, abilities, language, culture and more. As a place for social connection, aquatic facilities and swim schools provide a common place to create stronger communities.

Theme 5: Employment | The final theme related to the positive benefits to staff members within facilities and the associated impacts to the local economy and community.

Aquatic centres provide a valuable source of employment for a variety of people. Many high school and university students work within these centres as lifeguards or learn-to-swim teachers to gain casual or seasonal income to support them in their studies. The majority of the workforce are casual, often part-time or one of multiple jobs for those who are members of the community, live locally and place value on working in a team (National Aquatic

Industry Workforce Profile, 2019).

Additionally, aquatic centres also play a valuable role in providing employment opportunities for older Australians, or for parents and carers who need work flexibility. The range of skills, expertise and education required and often provided by the aquatic sector creates value for the centres, but also important life skills for their staff.

INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SOCIAL IMPACTS OF AQUATIC FACILITIES As outlined above, our research identified that aquatic facilities create social value and social impacts across health, social connection, social cohesion, education and safety, and employment. We have developed the following framework of infrastructure for social impact that identifies four key components that contribute to social impact: People, programs, places and policies.

It is also important to note that the social impact is created with and for community, as it is the local community that cocreates the social impacts in partnership with the aquatic facilities.

CURRENT & FUTURE PRIORITIES FOR AQUATIC FACILITIES Currently, water safety, enjoyment, health and wellbeing, community and staff training/education and connection are seen as important outcomes generated by aquatic facilities. A number of these areas of priority have been identified as being important enablers of social impact. However, both the survey and interview data identified opportunities to engage more strategically in considering the full breadth of social impact infrastructure in future endeavours.

Our research also identified a number of areas of opportunity for aquatic facilities and swim schools to enhance the social impact of their facilities and programs. Managers (via the survey) noted a range of priority

18 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

areas for aquatic facilities in upcoming years. Increasing participation in centre programs and activities, developing and sharing innovative solutions, addressing inclusion and increasing capacity are priority areas.

Within these, there are clear and evident links to partnering or coresourcing potential improvements.

The common priority areas focus on increasing participation (88% noting as high priority) and addressing diversity and inclusion in both policy (68%) and workforce (64%) are encouraging and suggest that social impact priorities are well aligned with the priority areas of managers. The research also identified a need to adapt facilities as the opportunities arise for more engaging and accessible spaces, in addition to encouraging innovation in the co-design of programs, events and experiences for social impact.

There is a clear opportunity to increase awareness and cultural competency around diverse and vulnerable community groups, for example LGBTIQ+ groups, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inclusion. Our research identified very limited, if any, focus on creating social outcomes, or targeted programming for these two communities. The research has identified the importance of people, policy and programs in the creation of social value, if aquatic facilities can ensure that all staff are appropriately trained in cultural competency for multicultural communities, person-first approaches for people with a disability, and better understanding genderdiversity, the opportunity to ensure safe, welcoming and inclusive places for all community members will be enhanced and improved. This will subsequently create additional opportunities for communities to develop social connections and social cohesion, in addition to the more tangible outcomes of health, education and employment.

A Greener Play Future For a brighter future for our children, we all must carry the responsibility of lowering carbon emissions.

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Donovan Bixley (left) and Kieran Smith at Raupo Reserve, Taupō. Image Laurilee McMichael, TDC

Image Laurilee McMichael, TDC

MULTILINGUAL PLAYGROUND SIGNAGE WORDS MATT MORTIMER, TAUPŌ DISTRICT COUNCIL

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play area can be as simple as a swing-set and a slide or other play equipment. However, Kieran Smith, Taupō District Council team lead of Assets and Cemeteries, decided for his latest playground projects he wasn’t going to be content with just rolling out another generic play area.

While a playground traditionally allows children to explore their physical boundaries, the idea of challenging young minds as well as bodies through play got Kieran thinking. How could he construct a playground with a learning component, something with a point of difference centered on not just the importance of play, but learning while being active?

The idea arose after Kieran visited a playground in another district with his wife and three preschoolers and observed an element of the playground was being overlooked. “I noticed bilingual signs and generic images of birds, dogs and things around the site, which was cool, but no one seemed to take an interest,” explained Kieran.

Kieran started to brainstorm and that night, while reading his kids a book, he had an idea. “The main thing about play, whether it be physical or pretend, is it needs to be fun and engaging,” Kieran observed. “This is something that children’s book authors excel in.”

Enter Donovan Bixley, a Taupō-based award-winning author and illustrator who has written, co-written and illustrated over 120 children’s books.

Donovan is widely known for his Flying Furballs series, his books in te reo Māori and English on Māui legends, and his illustrated adult books on the lives of Mozart and Shakespeare. Many of his publications sit on the shelves of public

libraries and bookcases across Aotearoa.

Kieran gave Donovan a brief to create characters that youngsters could search for while exploring play equipment. In response, Donovan created a series of 20 striking animals, birds and activities ranging from tigers to tūī (songbird) and ruru (owl) to rugby. As tamariki (children) find the pictures in their playground exploration they learn the te reo Māori and New Zealand sign-language-equivalent words and signs for each character.

Donovan claims Kieran’s idea for the characters and the accompanying language signs was right up his alley. “The biggest challenge was choosing images that would work across all three languages — especially New Zealand sign language.

We wanted them to be playful but also something young children could easily do.

Whale is a good example; it just brings a smile to your face to make the action of a spout of water coming out of your head.”

Donovan explains that the primary aim was simply to acknowledge that Aotearoa (New Zealand) has three official languages. “Like a good kids’ book, by making it fun hopefully we send those families off on their own little voyages of discovery to find more.”

Kieran says he’s thrilled his idea has been turned into such a playful and engaging reality, as well as providing the opportunity to implement something that doesn’t currently exist elsewhere in the country. “To have the talents of Donovan on display, too, is an added bonus. I’m looking forward to young ones coming and engaging with the characters and practicing their sign language and te reo Māori language skills.”

The first of Kieran and Donovan’s interactive play areas in the Taupō District

20 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

was rolled out in the riverside settlement of Whakamaru in December 2021, with more collaborative “learn while you play” concepts planned for other Taupō District locations in the future.

Whale signs by Donovan Bixley

tūī signs by Donovan Bixley

Image Laurilee McMichael, TDC

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in building infrastructure that supports people to be physically active.

To that end, I enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Urban Planning to further this new career goal. However, after 12 months of concurrently studying and working full time, all while travelling nearly 2 hours each way on the Monash Freeway every day, I was burning out at 21. So, I quit my graduate planning job at @Leisure Planners and set my sights on securing a job in local government.

FROM PLAYING TO PLANNING TO A PHD WORDS JOE NOVELLA, MARKETING AND CONTENT MANAGER, REC PEOPLE

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ec People provide services to local governments Australiawide, including mobile workforce solutions, recruitment services and professional development opportunities. We are proud to have played a part in Dan Ferguson’s career development and delighted to be able to tell his story.

I recently caught up with Dan — whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with at Rec People — to discuss his career journey working with local and state governments and not-for-profit organisations in the areas of elite sport, community recreation, social planning and public health.

TURNING A LOVE OF SPORT INTO A LIFELONG CAREER Working with Dan, you quickly realise that although he’s a man of few words, there is serious depth to his knowledge and experience. He is a member of the Parks and Leisure Australia Vic/Tas regional council and Generate Network Australia executive committee. He holds memberships with Play Australia, Planning Institute of Australia, and Landscape Institute of Australia…just to name a few.

In 2020, Dan started a boutique planning consultancy, theCommunityCollaborative. In 2021

he entered a PhD program within Swinburne University’s Sport Innovation Research Group, with a research focus on the provision of public infrastructure that supports physical activity. And, somewhere in between all of that, he got married.

Q. How did the journey begin?

A. As a child, I was sports mad. I played soccer in the winter, basketball in the summer, and just about every other sport imaginable at school. When the time came, in my teenage years, to think about my future career, all I could think about was sport. So, I decided to take the passion and love I had for sport and try to turn it into a job. I started out studying Exercise and Sport Science with dreams of working in pro sport, but quickly realised there weren’t many jobs available.

While working part time at a YMCA aquatic centre during my studies, I got a feel for the community recreation sector.

I got a chance internship at Simon Leisure Consulting under the guidance of PLA Vic/Tas Executive Officer and all-round industry guru, Richard Simon. That led to a graduate Leisure Planner role at @Leisure Planners under another industry legend, Sally Jeavons. Working with Sally really opened my eyes to the role local government plays in sport and recreation, and kick-started a new goal for a career

22 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

Q. How did you land that first role in local government?

A. It was tough. Countless applications and many interviews later, I wasn’t having much luck, always finishing runner-up to the successful candidate. In 2012, I received a chance phone call from somebody who would change my life and career forever, Mandy Nolton, Rec People’s Managing Director.

I agreed to catch up with Mandy for a casual chat and we talked about all things: study, career goals, and life in general. She is a warm and engaging person who authentically seemed to care about me and what I was up to.

She offered me a part-time job-share opportunity at the City of Port Phillip — though I wasn’t too sure about the temp thing. After spending 45 minutes talking about life with “Nolts” and seeing her genuinely want to help me, that was enough for me to take the chance. After 12 months with Rec People filling roles at both Port Phillip and Whittlesea Councils, I was lucky enough to secure a permanent fulltime job at the City of Port Phillip, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Q. What do you like best about working in the planning space?

A. Seeing a project go from an idea to being designed, being built, and then being used by the community, the full lifecycle. I’ll often drive past a park and see a new pavilion being built or a new exercise equipment installation and think, “Hey, that was me, I planned that 5 years ago!”

Participation in sport and physical activity hit an all-time high in 2019 with more people participating more frequently, according to AusPlay data, and recent reports suggest that Covid-19 lockdowns have positively impacted adult participation levels. But we, as a nation, are still not meeting physical activity guidelines and, as a result, we are experiencing a range of poor health outcomes, physically, mentally and socially, with a high societal cost (health care etc).

We have seen a shift in participation focus from competition to health and from traditional sport to individual, selfdirected activities. It’s vital that we as an industry recognise and change with these trends. That starts with planning how the environment we live, work and play in can support more physical activity more often.

Q. You had an established career in local government. Why take the risk of starting your own planning business in 2020?

A. theCommunityCollaborative was born in August 2020. The flexibility and freedom of having my own business really appealed to me, and Covid-19 probably accelerated the move. It was set up on the ethos of “collaboration over competition” — I’m all about doing interesting work with interesting people.

And, being my own boss means I get to pick and choose the projects I work on and who I work on them with. Getting paid for it is just a great by-product!

Q. You have been a big part of Rec People’s education team, facilitating recreation planning courses for the next generation of local government recreation planners from councils all over Australia. How have you found the experience of teaching?

A. Some people are surprised by this, but I am an extreme introvert by nature.

I hate being the centre of attention and will be the quiet one in the corner at social events. Thankfully, I’ve managed to refine my facilitation skills over many years of running public consultation and community engagement sessions. Fake it till you make it, eh!

The thought of public speaking, running workshops or teaching a class still scares me half to death! However, being involved in the Rec Ignite sessions (Rec People’s industry forums) and teaching the Recreation Planning course with Rec People has reminded me why I choose to step outside of my comfort zone. Seeing participants grow and learn from week to week and the genuine conversations and connections that are built among colleagues, it makes it all worth it!

Also, giving back to the industry and the people that have given me so much is a big motivator for me.

When Mandy asked me if I’d like to be involved in capacity building the future generation of recreation planners, I jumped at the opportunity. Being a part of Rec People’s professional development offerings is only the beginning of my journey of giving back to the industry. I have plans to work in academia in the future. It’s my time to

give back now and I’m looking forward to nurturing the next generation coming through.

Q. What advice do you have for Local Government professionals around Australia and New Zealand looking for a career growth?

1. Say yes! Whatever comes across your desk, say yes.

2. Be open to new challenges. Nobody is an expert in everything, you only learn by doing.

3. Get involved. Actively seek ways of getting involved in new things; boards, committees, networking groups, all extremely valuable networking opportunities, important not only for your professional brand but also your personal growth.

4. Don’t neglect professional development opportunities.

Rec People offer great courses developed and instructed by industry professionals.

“And if none of the above works, give Mandy Nolton a call, it worked for me.”

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TRENDS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS RECREATIONAL SERVICES SHARES SOME EXCITING INSIGHTS ON WHAT THE FUTURE BRINGS FOR PARKS AND OPEN SPACE MAINTENANCE SERVICES WORDS CARLA REINKE, RECREATIONAL SERVICES, NZ

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elebrating its 30th year, Recreational Services, New Zealand’s largest specialist parks and open space maintenance provider, was started in 1992 by Managing Director Brett Turner, his wife Natalie Turner, sister Keitha Turner and brother-in-law, Paul Broom. Its humble beginnings started when Brett took up the opportunity as Head Groundskeeper at Auckland’s Takapuna Golf Course, which then had a staff of six. Three decades on, the team has grown to 600 across 13 council districts, making it the largest organisation of its kind in New Zealand.

Priding itself on “creating exceptional spaces”, the operation has evolved over the years to provide all aspects of parks maintenance with a service delivery covering 95 percent of all elements involved in managing and maintaining parks and open spaces, with only unrelated specialist work being subcontracted.

Recreational Services’ scope of works includes horticulture, mowing, vegetation control, fixed assets maintenance and management, facilities management, playground maintenance, cemetery services, graffiti removal, sports turf maintenance, sportsfield construction and renovations, and an inhouse agronomic and environmental consultancy division, Sportsfield Surface Design Maintenance (SSDM). SSDM is known for designing the first fully enclosed turf stadium, Forsyth Barr in Dunedin, and is currently working with Christchurch City Council on the design of the new Christchurch Stadium set to open in 2024.

“Our people and our culture set us apart,” explains CEO Cameron Parr. “Our pillars of professionalism, ownership, knowledge and people are based on the same family values as when the team consisted of six. Second to that is our collaborative and transparent relationships with our customers, doing what we say we’ll do, and finding value to add back to our clients and the communities we work in. Parks are unique and require a team that is passionate about parks and open spaces.”

When asked about what the future holds, Brett Turner had some exciting

news to share. “After 30 years in operation, we are amazed at what we at Recreational Services have achieved.

As we grew, our vision was clear that we didn’t want to be the biggest but wanted to be the best in our industry.

We aligned with people, staff, customers and suppliers who shared our vision.

Our vision also enabled us to make a strong, meaningful and lasting impact on the communities we work in. This extended on to the wider parks industry by empowering those wanting a career in parks to become qualified and have access to work with some of the best in the industry.

“Over the past year, the directors have been reviewing the future of Recreational Services and the legacy to create something greater than ourselves, and how we continue building on our vision through the great work our teams do every day. Following an extensive process, we are excited to announce that Recreational Services has recently joined forces with two similar Australian businesses, Green Options and Skyline Landscapes.

“Each of the three companies has its own strengths and expertise. Bringing these strengths together enhances our abilities beyond what our industry has ever seen, providing a completely unparalleled depth of service to our customers.

“Looking back, I’m truly moved and grateful for the many lives we have impacted through our service delivery, and our amazing people are what makes Recreational Services the special place it is today.”

This merger brings exciting opportunities for the group, especially when it comes to sharing industry knowledge, best practices, innovation and sustainability — an area where a lot of energy and financial investment has been made for many years by all three companies. In New Zealand, Recreational Services has been at the forefront of bringing many firsts to the parks industry and is excited to continue innovating and cross-sharing the journey of becoming carbon neutral.

Skyline founder Colin Richardson explains, “Creating greenspaces that make

24 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

people happy and healthy has always been at the core of Skyline’s business philosophy, and looking after our people and the communities in which we operate is how we make it happen. For a long time, we have watched Green Options and Recreational Services take a similar approach. Like us, they want to build and grow a successful business while also making a positive impact.

“Making a genuine, positive impact is something we always aimed to pursue as we continued to evolve. Collaborating across three different refined sets of capabilities, two countries and a wealth of knowledge, enables us to make this impact. Merging not only provides our clients with significantly more value and a suite of services like no other landscape business in Australia or New Zealand, it also creates something that is driven by collaboration and mutual respect.”

Green Options Founder Tony Herman said, “We’ve always thrived on empowering our teams and offering opportunities to learn and develop; an approach that has also benefited our clients. Having similar values, a belief in the transformative effect of the outdoors and a desire to make an impactful improvement on the landscaping industry was key. It’s why we started talking to Skyline and Recreational Services many years ago. As we’ve moved through various discussions about the merger, it became obvious that not only is there massive benefit in sharing our complementary services and knowledge, most importantly, all our core principles are aligned, which made merging the three companies the right decision. There is simply no one else we would want to do this with.”

In essence, as a group, the three businesses will continue operating as before but share the extraordinary coincidence of being founded on similar values, a passion for parks and open spaces, all family-owned, and each bringing a 30-year industry track record — the makings of an incredible partnership that will continue creating remarkable parks and open spaces across Australasia.

Image used for illustration purpose only

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VICTORIA PARK VISION RECOGNITION, RESTORATION & RECONNECTION WORDS BRISBANE CITY COUNCIL

B

risbane City Council is transforming Victoria Park into a world-class destination that will be a natural retreat and an urban park for adventure, discovery and reconnection.

In 2019, Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner announced the 18-hole Victoria Park Golf Course would be converted and integrated into the existing Victoria Park, changing the space into a 64-hectare public parkland, offering more opportunities for locals and visitors to enjoy Brisbane’s beautiful climate. “We are creating Brisbane’s biggest park in 50 years enabling visitors to connect with nature. Council is wanting to make Victoria Park a pillar of Brisbane’s healthy, outdoor lifestyle that will excite and inspire visitors. New enhancements to Victoria Park will be design-led to deliver high-quality places and spaces that reflect Brisbane’s character, identity and climate.”

Victoria Park Vision was released in late 2020 and was the first step in a long-term process of transforming one of Brisbane’s oldest parks into an amazing new inner-city greenspace.

The Victoria Park Draft Master Plan is currently underway and builds on the Vision with further technical investigations and community engagement to refine the overall layout, areas and elements.

In July 2021, Brisbane was elected as Host City for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with Victoria Park named as the location for temporary

Games venues for equestrian cross country and freestyle BMX events.

“Victoria Park will be a centrepiece in the Brisbane 2032 Games and will provide a lasting legacy for future generations to enjoy this natural retreat in the heart of the city,” explained Cr Schrinner.

Council is investing $83 million over four years to bring Victoria Park Vision to life with revegetated forests, rewilded areas, native bushland pockets, nature playgrounds and restored waterholes. “Our vision for the park includes adventure activities and unique experiences, including a nature and water-play gully, treehouse, adventure valley, lakes and wetlands, off-leash dog areas, playgrounds, a pump track, new sports field and tennis courts, and a large community garden,” said Cr Schrinner.

While some new features will be delivered soon, others are part of the long-term vision. The restored urban forest habitat in the Vision will take more than 50 years to be fully mature. “Rewilding of the park is a priority for the project and we have set a target of 60 percent canopy coverage across the park, a significant increase on the current 10 percent canopy coverage,” noted Cr Schrinner.

Revegetated forests, native bushland pockets and restored waterholes will speak of the site’s original landscapes.

This includes Lake Barrambin, a place for reflection, based on the wetlands and waterholes that previously existed onsite and were once a part of an

28 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

important source of food for Brisbane’s First Nation’s people. A visitor centre will welcome residents and tourists and take them deeper into the park’s natural environment and the city’s heritage.

Victoria Park Vision has been shaped by community-driven design.

Two rounds of engagement were held, initially for ideas to create the draft vision and then to seek the community’s views on the draft vision itself. The primary strategy driving the visioning process was Council’s desire for strong community involvement and ownership of the Vision to guide decisions about the park’s future.

More than 16,000 people were engaged in the creation of the Vision and more than 35,000 through the consultation phase. Throughout this phase, Council has engaged extensively with Traditional Custodians to identify appropriate cultural elements in the park design, including planting palettes, artworks, structures and reflective spaces.

“Victoria Park will be culturally authentic and reflect the Brisbane community’s dreams for the future,” said Cr Schrinner. “It will acknowledge, explore and celebrate the many layers of human contact with the landscape and the site’s significance to the local Aboriginal people of Brisbane and the wider region.”

Feedback showed people want Victoria Park to be a natural place filled with native species, large shady trees, water features, all-ages activities, barbecues and creative playgrounds.

7.

8.

Local residents, stakeholder groups and the wider community have demonstrated a groundswell of support for the vision of Victoria Park to be transformed into a natural retreat and urban park where they can explore and reconnect with a uniquely Brisbane destination.

Ideas from Brisbane residents inspired the Victoria Park design framework, which is formed around three principles and eight strategies that articulate how the Vision will be achieved and guide more detailed planning.

The guiding principles for the Vision are: Recognition | creating a place to respectfully celebrate the connection between culture, history and nature.

Restoration | Celebrating unique interwoven landscapes and ecosystems.

Reconnection | Making transformational connections that stitch the parkland back into the city and consider the park’s unique history, the needs of the surrounding community, environmental imperatives and opportunities offered by the site’s natural features and location.

The eight strategies are: 1. Room for water 2. Cultural landscape 3. Connected habitats 4. Health and recreation 5. Transport connections 6. Unique experiences

Creative expression Relationships and partnerships

In June 2021, Victoria Park opened for the community to visit. Since then, City Parklands Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brisbane City Council, took over the maintenance, operations and activations for Victoria Park. City Parklands Services manage and operate South Bank Parklands and Roma Street Parklands.

“City Parklands Services has a wealth of experience in managing our world class parks at South Bank and Roma Street,” Cr Schrinner said.

“They have already started to transform Victoria Park, changing it from a golf course with the removal of 33 bunkers and other golf infrastructure and undertaking extensive maintenance and restoration across the 64 hectares of the park. We are so excited to see the community venturing into the park, to explore the gullies and forested areas that already exist, and to take in the expansive city views that offer a new perspective of Brisbane’s skyline.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION You can read the Victoria Park Vision and associated Community Engagement Report online at brisbane.qld.gov.au

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 29

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PARTNERING ON PLAY TURNING KIRIKIRIROA HAMILTON INTO AN URBAN PLAYGROUND WORDS DR DAMIEN PUDDLE, LOCAL PLAY ADVOCATE, HAMILTON CITY COUNCIL AND SPORT WAIKATO

I

n 2018, the Aotearoa New Zealand Government passed The Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill to reinstate the promotion of four well-beings: social, economic, environmental, and cultural, as statutory requirements of local government1. Local government has traditionally put play and play outcomes solely within the realm of parks and recreation, but a rethinking of what constitutes play, and where play can and should occur (ie. in locations outside of formal/traditional playspaces), will be valuable to truly meet the statutory requirements of the four well-beings.

The traditional view of children’s needs being met by the likes of schools, parks and streets represents a narrow understanding of what children and young people need from their city2,3.

Indeed, public space in general is often overlooked as a key aspect of their everyday experiences, and thus their wellbeing. Furthermore, dividing young people’s lives into prescribed zones of appropriate activity is unlikely to result in holistic solutions to their educational, developmental and recreational needs4.

The places and spaces in our cities have an enduring impact on young people’s wellbeing, therefore “we must shape the built environment with children and youth at the very heart of our considerations”.5 Put another way, as the Parliament of New South Wales has stated, “If we fail to create such playful child-friendly environments, it will not just be to the detriment of this age group but to all society.”6

A partnership between Hamilton City Council, Sport Waikato and Sport NZ has been initiated to align with these conclusions, going beyond the realms of traditional understanding and planning for play by piloting the country’s first Local Play Advocate role to activate the Council’s Play Strategy 2019-2030.

THE PLAY STRATEGY The Play Strategy was adopted in April 2019, and won the Outstanding Research, Policy and Planning award from Recreation Aotearoa that year.

From what was initially a straightforward review of the 2012 HCC Sport and Recreation Strategy, collaboration with Sport NZ and Sport Waikato resulted in the country’s first Play Strategy; a new way to conceptualise physical activity and the role of local government in providing quality play opportunities for the community.

The Play Strategy covers informal play, recreation and sport. Its vision is to see Hamilton as “a great place for everyone to play” and includes the following outcome areas: “Hamilton is reimagined as an urban playground; decision-making is informed by evidence and community voice, Hamilton’s play opportunities are achieved through collaborative partnerships; and we are responsive to changing play, sport and recreation trends”7.

The outworking of this vision and these outcomes necessitates an innovative approach to play that extends beyond the traditional boundaries of parks and playgrounds and requires

32 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

greater collaboration between business units within Hamilton City Council than has usually occurred to date.

In 2020, Sport Waikato, which provides “high value, strategic, regional leadership in play, active recreation and sport through collaboration and partnership”8 in the Waikato region, partnered with Council on the development of Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Local Play Advocate role, realising the next step in Sport NZ’s vision for play; play advocacy embedded within local government.

ACTIVATING THE PLAY STRATEGY The role of the Local Play Advocate is to activate the Play Strategy through the development of an action plan, facilitate and empower a team of play champions from across council’s business units and support the development of spontaneous play opportunities in the city through high level strategy alignment and pilot projects. A key focus of the Play Champions team is to try and achieve play outcomes via parts of council that have not been closely involved in play outcomes in the past, such as transportation, storm water, city planning, and capital infrastructure projects units. Some of the projects that have been completed or are nearing completion and can be shared include: • Mobile play assets, such as a pop-up parkour setup (Figure 1). This setup was installed during a tactical urbanism project and can be used to activate different sites around the city based on events, seasons and other needs.

Figure 4

Figure 2

• Incorporating play into necessary asset renewals (Figure 2). Bollard renewals at this rugby field created an opportunity to create a ‘slalom’ style obstacle course and sprint track in addition to celebrating the regional rugby union centenary (the colours represent all the rugby clubs in the region).

• Activating existing functional space with enhanced play opportunities (Figure 3). Adding a climbing traverse challenge into an already covered and lit pedestrian tunnel. And utilising a ‘dig once’ style approach to an adjacent capital wastewater pipe project (Figure 4) that will involve the activation of a footpath and planted area in the entrance to the underpass.

Both projects are due to occur over the summer season and will activate a local school’s walking and bus route.

Figure 3

REFERENCES 1. New Zealand Government. (2018, April 11).

Four well-beings core to local government’s role [Press release]. https://www.beehive. govt.nz/release/four-well-beings-corelocal-government%E2%80%99s-role 2. Bishop, K. and Corkery, L. (2017).

Introduction. In K. Bishop and L. Corkery (Eds.), Designing cities with children and

CONCLUSION Research has shown that areas not specifically designed for children can be extremely valuable for play and wellbeing outcomes, and indeed further activated to create a playful and childfriendly city. The expertise of the Local Play Advocate (with the support of the Play Strategy itself) is proving effective in growing the knowledge of council staff to practically incorporate play into the planning and delivery of the city’s assets beyond traditional spaces and places.

The progress described here to activate such spaces is a demonstration of the value of the partnership approach to play and aligns well with council’s priority of shaping a fun city with lots to do.

young people: Beyond playgrounds and skate parks (pp. 1-7). Routledge.

3. Owens, P. E. (2017). A place for adolescents:

and Young People (2011). Building spaces and places for children and young people.

Western Australia Government, Perth.

6. Parliament of New South Wales (2006).

Inquiry into children, young people and the built environment: Report No. 8153.

Committee on Children and Young People, Sydney.

7. Hamilton City Council (2019). Hamilton City Council’s Play Strategy 2019 – 2039. https://www.hamilton.govt.nz/our-

The power of research to inform the built

council/strategiesandplans/Documents/

environment. In Bishop, K. and Corkery,

Hamilton%20City%20Council%20Play%20

L., Eds. Designing cities with children and

Strategy%20-%20FINAL%20STRATEGY%20

young people: Beyond playgrounds and

-%20for%20Council%20meeting%20

skate parks (pp. 65-78). Routledge.

4. Bishop, K. (2017). Utilizing research for the benefit of children’s lives in cities: Acknowledging barriers and embracing

18%20April%202019.pdf 8. Sport Waikato (2021). About Us. https:// www.sportwaikato.org.nz/about-us.aspx 9. Woolley, H. (2017). Children and young

change. In K. Bishop and L. Corkery (Eds.),

people sharing urban open spaces. In K.

Designing cities with children and young

Bishop and L. Corkery (Eds.), Designing

people: Beyond playgrounds and skate

cities with children and young people:

parks (pp. 79-91). Routledge.

Beyond playgrounds and skate parks (pp.

5. Western Australia Commissioner for Child

92-104). Routledge.

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 33

CREATING ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY & COST-EFFICIENT GREENSPACE TIFTUF HYBRID BERMUDA CASE STUDIES

T

ifTuf, a hybrid Bermuda grass, has become the benchmark when it comes to measuring the drought tolerance of turf. The product is the result of almost 25 years of research and development from one of the world’s leading turf grass breeders, the University of Georgia. TifTuf was selected from almost 30,000 Bermuda varieties. It has a fine leaf blade with dense growth that makes it ideal for a wide variety of applications.

PROVIDING BUSHFIRE MITIGATION The small rural town of Balmoral suffered devastating losses during the bushfires of 2019/2020, with the fires destroying 18 homes and around 90 percent of its surrounding bushland. Thankfully, days and weeks of hard work from local fire brigades, community members and other volunteers saw them save the town’s historical centre, Balmoral Village Hall, from almost certain destruction.

A big part of the renovation project to restore the site was to ensure the gardens looked fantastic and were also able to stand up to the harsh climate of the area and provide some natural barriers to the surrounding bushland, as a buffer to future bushfires events.

The centrepiece of the landscape is the 1000 square metres of lawn that surrounds the picturesque hall. The grass chosen to fit the brief was TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda. TifTuf was selected due to its excellent drought tolerance, which will enable it to stand up to Balmoral’s long hot summers without the need for constant irrigation.

PROVIDING HIGH WEAR TOLERANCE In 2019, HG Turf approached Lawn Solutions Australia member Musturf with a product called XtraGrassTM, a hybrid turf system with both natural grass and synthetic fibres. This product can increase play time on fields, reduce

divots, eliminate establishment time and keep fields looking greener for longer.

Musturf saw the opportunity to use XtraGrassTM on high-wear sporting areas and proceeded to grow 3500sqm on their turf farm in Freemans Reach.

As the news of XtraGrassTM with TifTuf quickly spread, we were approached to conduct trials at various locations including Waverley Oval, Castle Hill Golf Course and the Australian Catholic College. Each client clearly saw the benefits of XtraGrassTM and have all been impressed by its performance.

Another great case study was conducted by The Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, trialled in a hightraffic pedestrian area. This section suffered intense wear from people overtaking others on the grass beside the walkway. The section is now performing strongly and can be easily top-dressed and maintained as required.

PROVIDING LOW WATER REQUIREMENTS Built in 1852, Mount Lofty House is a venue and hotel in Crafers, South Australia. In recent years, the property has undergone significant additions and renovations. Recently, discussions were had about the best turf solutions for the Mount Lofty fire track and for the repair of some existing areas. “Water management is a critical aspect to our business as we do not have mains access and therefore rely solely on our springfed water,“ explains David Tonkin, Guest Relations Manager at Mount Lofty House.

Sunnyside Instant Lawns recommended TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda, the only couch grass currently recognised with the Smart Approved WaterMark in Australia. TifTuf would provide a grass that could handle a lot of foot traffic but would also withstand extended periods without irrigation if necessary. The finished result has provided a spectacular

unity between the natural living areas and the Mount Lofty Facilities.

PROVIDING A PLATFORM FOR FIRST-CLASS EVENTS During the thick of Covid-19 in 2020, the Redcliffe Dolphins Rugby League Club penned a deal with the Brisbane Roar A-League and W-League teams that would see soccer played on the hallowed rugby league ground of Moreton Daily Stadium.

The right grass is paramount when you imagine the traffic the playing area has to cope with. Among the dozen A-League matches, the venue was scheduled to host two NRL trials at the start of the 2021 season. They are also heading into their own rugby league season. This would usually mean hosting four senior rugby league teams on a Saturday evening, then turning out an A-League soccer pitch twelve hours later.

“This amount of usage is probably more than some of the major stadiums around the country at the moment, but we are enjoying the challenges presented when running a multi-use venue. We also have some great support and advice from our suppliers at Lawn Solutions Australia and Twin View Turf.

Their guidance, along with the quality turf that we planted has helped us enormously,” said Redcliffe Dolphins General Manager, Grant Cleal. “The players absolutely love the venue and the TifTuf playing surface.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION TifTuf Hybrid Bermuda is exclusively available in Australia through the Lawn Solutions Australia national network of turf suppliers. For project enquiries contact the Lawn Solutions Australia on 1300 883 711

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 35

LOCAL UNDERSTANDING, GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE, TRUSTED ADVICE Otium Planning Group is a contemporary sport and leisure consultancy providing trusted advice to the sport, recreation, community, social and tourism industries in the following areas.

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND MARKET RESEARCH

To find out more please go to www.otiumplanning.com.au, call Head Office on (03) 9798 7300 or contact one of our offices via email: Brisbane qld@otiumplanning.com.au New Zealand nz@otiumplanning.co.nz Cairns cairns@otiumplanning.com.au Perth wa@otiumplanning.com.au Canberra act@otiumplanning.com.au Sunshine Coast qld@otiumplanning.com.au Darwin nt@otiumplanning.com.au Sydney nsw@otiumplanning.com.au Melbourne vic@otiumplanning.com.au

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WA EXPANSION SUPPORTS RECIPROCAL LEARNINGS WORDS DAVE LANFEAR, DIRECTOR, OTIUM PLANNING GROUP

F

ollowing the successful joining of forces between Otium Planning Group and Dave Lanfear Consulting to establish a new WA office, learnings are being shared that support the knowledge expansion of the Otium team for the benefit of its clients and industries across Australia and New Zealand.

Dave Lanfear has enjoyed a successful career and built an impressive resume of experience in the sport, recreation, leisure and community sectors. Dave has worked in multiple senior positions with Sport England and as a consultant for Coffey Commercial Advisory/ Stratcorp.

Before recently joining the Otium team, Dave supported the WA community with a diversity of quality planning outcomes through his highly successful consultancy. This experience benefits the broader Otium team by sharing learnings and innovations from the west with consultants from other offices in Australia.

Dave has recognised a greater crossover of learnings in WA between sport and recreation and social infrastructure projects. Planning for this diverse range of assets does not occur in isolation and, due to limited resources, a focus has been on the integration of ongoing asset management with improving functionality and delivering a matrix of diverse and appropriate community uses.

Local government clients, in particular, are demonstrating a solid understanding of the importance of ensuring that the success of an asset relies upon integrating an effective asset management regime aligned to contemporary user requirements. The similarities of these projects across different infrastructure types (sport, recreation, arts, leisure, culture and civic buildings) include using specialists to review existing asset lifecycle and planned investment. This is then integrated with an assessment of current and future user requirements and by determining current asset management budget commitments, which can be

adjusted to provide a more efficient financial return. The outcome is a realignment of commitments within the long-term financial plans for the client rather than a continuation of a nonintegrated asset replacement model.

This experience benefits the Otium team by learning from other focus areas and projects. Common principles, learnings and outcomes from arts, cultural and social projects, and how they can be applied to broader sport, recreation and leisure planning principles, is proving enormously beneficial to further supporting quality outcomes for Otium’s clients.

To provide further support to its Western Australia clients and to further expand its resourcing and expertise, Otium has also engaged Wayne Stuart as a Senior Consultant. Wayne brings his impressive breadth of experience, having worked in the recreation industry for over 20 years.

His experiences involve working within the government sector in metropolitan and regional Western Australia as a Facility Planner and Project Manager.

Dave and Wayne are passionate about the sport and recreation industry.

Wayne is a Regional Councillor with Parks and Leisure Australia (WA) and has demonstrated his commitment to the recreation and leisure planning industry by developing a series of resources, including the recreation strategy checklist to assist the parks, leisure, sport and recreation industry professionals in developing a robust and defensible facility planning process. He is involved in developing an industry definitions guide, which is currently being peer-reviewed and will form part of a leisure and recreation planning guide.

In partnership with PLA WA, Dave developed the Community Facility Guidelines to establish resources for industry practitioners to assist with public open space and sport and recreation facility strategic planning and development.

Dave and Wayne also regularly present

to the industry to assist those involved in planning for community facilities.

Otium is already recognised as a trusted advisor to the industry due to its exceptional reputation for delivering high-quality outcomes for its clients.

These results are now being underpinned by a vast sharing of knowledge between offices, including the new Western Australia office. This ensures communities benefit from well-planned, contemporary outcomes that maximise community use and, as a result, broader social, economic and environmental outcomes.

Using this newly expanded knowledge base, Otium’s WA team recently won the contract to partner with PLA WA to develop and deliver its Leisure and Recreation Planners course. The syllabus will support the measurement of competency and include recommendations for a strategy for delivery, including potential partnerships and business scenarios. The course will: • Ensure base-level competencies for all Leisure and Recreation Planners in metro and regional WA. • Address the training gap to facilitate and enhance employability skills and knowledge to meet organisational needs effectively.

• Provide a high-quality course to increase the skills and knowledge of participants.

• Develop participant’s capacity to plan, design, coordinate and manage projects, including strategic facility planning and infrastructure projects.

• Provide access to an industry resource library, networking and mentoring.

It is anticipated that this course will be available in the first part of 2022, subject to peer review and endorsement by the Board of PLA (WA).

For further details on learnings shared between Australia and New Zealand, or the Leisure and Recreation Planners course, please contact Dave Lanfear (Director) at david.lanfear@otiumplanning.com.au

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 37

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

I

n this edition of the PLA Journal, we bring you a number of articles from across the global that demonstrate how the Covid-19 pandemic actually provides opportunities for those of us in the parks sector.

There is a useful piece from a leading US consultant on multigenerational facilities and the role they play in today’s society.

We examine lessons gleamed from research on why society needs nature, and explore the growing role of parks on the US population, as well as cruise an update on a new role in Scotland for one of our past international keynote speakers.

John Senior Editorial Coordinator

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38 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

A NEW PATH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS INTRODUCED AMERICANS TO PARKS AND OPEN SPACES AND, ACCORDING TO US MAYORS, THE TREND WILL CONTINUE

O

ver the past year, as Covid-19 restrictions shuttered restaurants, museums and sports events, Americans sought comfort, as well as escape, from their living rooms in public parks and open spaces. In Erie, Pensylvannia, the number of visitors to Presque Isle State Park soared 165 percent during the third week of March 2020, compared to the same week one year earlier. That same month, popular trails in Dallas saw usage increase from 30 to 75 percent, and trails in Minneapolis saw summertime levels of visitors during the still-cold month. At the same time, many cities encouraged residents to step outside; they created new space for outdoor dining, widened sidewalks, and laid out new bike lanes and bike paths.

It’s a small perk, but the pandemic compelled many people to become better acquainted with the outdoor spaces in their metropolitan area. This newfound relationship is generally considered to be healthful for people and for their communities. But will that marriage last? Or, when the pandemic

abates, will people forgo outdoor spaces in favour of Netflix? Will cities eliminate the bike paths and push restaurant diners back indoors? Last summer, Boston University’s Initiative on Cities put those questions and others to 130 mayors of American cities with more than 75,000 residents. The answers in the latest Menino Survey of Mayors (March 2021), suggest most mayors have faith in the marriage, at least for now.

Three out of four mayors surveyed said they expect residents to continue spending more time visiting parks and greenspaces than they did before the pandemic. Roughly two-thirds said they expect residents to spend more time biking or walking. More than half of the responding mayors said they would like to see more improvements to their parks and to programming events within those parks, although more than a third also said they expected funding for parks to take a big financial hit in the wake of the pandemic. While nearly half of the mayors said they had shut down some roads to through traffic, only 6 percent said they planned to make the closures permanent.

The IoC report on the survey, titled Urban Parks and the Public Realm: Equity & Access in Post-Covid Cities, found that in the early weeks of the pandemic, many cities across the country closed parks, playgrounds and hiking trails, hoping that shutting down outdoors spaces would also shut down the spread of the virus. That changed, however, when health experts realised that the outdoors offered one of the safest places to be. Cities moved quickly to reopen parks and close streets to allow people to play and safely gather. Communities also offered broad support for protesters who gathered in record numbers last summer to call for racial justice in the wake of recent police violence against Black Americans.

The report was written by Katharine Lusk, BU Initiative on Cities codirector; PhD political science candidate Songhyun Park (GRS’23); Katherine Levine Einstein and David M Glick, both College of Arts & Sciences political science associate professors; Maxwell Palmer, a CAS political science assistant professor; and Stacy Fox, IoC associate director.

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 39

“This past year reminded mayors and their constituents that the public realm can really be the people’s realm,” says Lusk, the report’s lead author. “Cities wrote new stories on their streets and in their parks of people marching, kids playing, families dining.

“Our survey showed that it’s possible to reclaim the public realm for people,” she states. “Nine out of 10 mayors created new space for outdoor dining, which meant reclaiming parking lots, on-street parking, or, in some cases, entire streets. This reallocation required changes to zoning, new permitting processes, new inspectional services, and mayors moved swiftly.”

KEY FINDINGS Across the country, mayors tend to paint a very positive picture of their parks and open space. They consider their parks to be widely accessible and safe to use. Many spoke of their parks with pride; 70 percent agree that all residents, regardless of race, ethnicity or income, live within easy walking distance of a park. A slightly higher proportion, 77 percent, believe that parks are also safe for all users, and a similar percentage believe Black residents, specifically, are able to safely use parks without fear of police. Yet less than half of responding mayors said the quality of greenspace was the same in all neighbourhoods.

Research from the Trust for Public Land, which, along with Citi and the Rockefeller Foundation, supported the research, shows that parks serving primarily non-white populations are half the size and serve five times as many people as parks that serve majority white populations.

“I think both the most encouraging and discouraging finding is the juxtaposition of the question about residents having equal access to open space and having open space of equal quality,“ says co-author Glick. “The fact that mayors differentiate the two is encouraging and offers the potential for change. The fact that the gap is so large, and was so large at a time when such spaces were especially important, is discouraging.”

Lusk says she found the parks’ “access versus quality” distinction surprising.

“Residents in the Northeast are most likely to have easy walk access to a park,” she says (79 percent of mayors agree), “but mayors in the Northeast are most likely to acknowledge the quality of parks and greenspace varies by neighbourhood” (69 percent agree).

The survey’s findings suggest that most American mayors have

not embraced the pandemic as an opportunity to fundamentally reimagine how they allocate space in the public realm, particularly roadways. “Dining was the only area where rapid street innovation was widespread,” says Lusk.

“In Europe, the rapid expansion of new bike infrastructure — which we did not see in the United States — had a positive impact on cycling behaviour.”

The relatively modest ambitions of US mayors run counter to results from prior surveys. In 2018, mayors told the IoC that they believe traffic crashes are the public health issue they’re held most accountable for, providing motivation to create safer streets. And, in the 2019 survey, 76 percent said they believed that their cities were too oriented towards cars, while 71 percent favoured giving up parking and driving lanes to create new bike lanes.

Asked about residents’ future use of local greenspaces, most mayors were optimistic about a continuing appreciation for local parks and a lasting interest in biking and walking. Mayors in Northeast cities were most likely to expect their residents to increase visiting parks (84 percent), walking (84 percent), and cycling (74 percent).

The IoC found that even while most mayors are seeing budgets shrink, they are taking on new responsibilities. In December 2020, prior to the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the National League of Cities reported that cities and towns had seen revenues decline by 21 percent since

40 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

the beginning of the pandemic, while expenditures have increased by 17 percent as a result of it.

Asked where they anticipate the most ‘dramatic’ financial cuts to local services, mayors most often cited schools, with parks coming in second. The IoC reports that on average, big cities spent about $250 per resident on parks and recreation and natural resources in 2017. That same year, elementary and secondary education investments averaged $1930 per resident, and police expenditures averaged $410.

CONCLUSIONS The IoC report concludes that the last year surveyed has revealed the long unappreciated value of parks and open spaces, which offer sanctuary and solace and provide forums to protest racial injustice throughout the United States.

“But,” the authors write, “more remains to be done to create public spaces that are welcoming, accessible and safe to all residents, and that promote both human and ecological health.

“Our interviews with mayors revealed many who are already advocates for high-quality greenspace in every neighbourhood, and many more who have not yet realised that these are true legacy investments. We also heard from relatively few mayors who sought to permanently reclaim streets for new human-centred, multigenerational uses.

“As the country emerges from this winter, perhaps mayors — and their constituents — will look to the public realm with fresh eyes and ideas.

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MULTIGENERATIONAL FACILITIES A TRUE CONCEPT WORTH INVESTING IN WORDS LEON YOUNGER, PRESIDENT OF PROS CONSULTING, USA

O

ver the course of the last 40 years, community recreation facilities have gone through a multitude of changes.

In the 1960s recreation centres were primarily created to serve several neighborhoods and were designed in size to approx 10,000 to 15,000 square feet. Each usually accommodated a basketball court, community program room for different types of classes, a small kitchen, administration space, restrooms and storage. Often opened five days a week from noon to 9pm, they were primarily used for groups during the day, neighbourhood sports play in the afternoon and evening, and day camps during the summer.

Most of the programs were highly subsidised by taxpayers.

In the 1970s-1980s, community recreation centres grew to 25,000 to 50,000 square feet and included space for two gym floors, a flat-water 25-yard pool for competitive swimming, learn-to-swim classes, and some general aquatic fitness programs. Room spaces in the community centre were created for seniors, preschool and after school and summer day-camp play space. These community centres serviced more of a community area made up of seven to ten neighbourhoods versus a couple of neighbourhoods.

Most of the program spaces were used for general programs for aquatics such as learn-to-swim programs and competitive swim programs, and the program rooms were used for aerobics, fitness classes, before- and after-school programs for grade school kids and senior adult programs. Designated spaces were for seniors, fitness, aquatics, and gym spaces, with little overlap of

shared-use spaces. These community recreation centres were typically open from 9am to 9pm Monday through Saturday for classes, sports leagues for adults and youth, senior programs, group fitness programs, and some individual fitness classes, and weight machines with cardio treadmills. During this timeframe, community centres began to charge a small membership with program fees for fitness, aquatics and sports leagues.

These community recreation centres were approximately 30-40 percent cost recovery in capturing the cost to operate these types of facilities.

In the 90s to 2010, community recreation centres became regional community centres that grew from 50,000 square foot to 80-100,000 square feet and included five major core program spaces to accommodate aquatics, fitness, sport courts, seniors and general program spaces. These types of centres served an entire community and were developed to provide a cost recovery level of return from 75-100 percent from memberships, daily access fees, program fees and rentals. These centres were open 100-110 hours a week over seven days.

The regional community centres provided not only local community recreation needs but also included regional sports tournaments for basketball, volleyball, wrestling, as well as local, regional and statewide swim meets. It is during this time that communities realised that community centres not only served a local community but also had regional economic appeal.

From 2010 to 2021, regional community centres have become

42 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

multigenerational community centres, growing in size to 100,000 to 160,000+ square feet with a returning a cost recovery rate of 80-110 percent. These multigenerational spaces still have single core program spaces for sports, aquatics, fitness, seniors, and life skill spaces, however they are now multifunctional in design and multigenerational in use.

These facilities typically have four bodies of water in an aquatic space that can provide competitive water, fitness water, play water and therapeutic water in one pool area, offering a much wider age segment appeal to the community than just a flat-water pool for fitness and competitive swimming.

In addition, gyms are designed to provide opportunities for basketball, volleyball, wrestling, ninja-gym space, baseball, softball and field sports spaces in one setting, with the space created based on the type of activity required, similar to a convention centre arena.

This appeals to a full array of practice and competitive sports for the entire community to enjoy. The gym space usually has a large walking track for walkers and runners to exercise that goes beyond the court space.

Fitness spaces include free weight space, press weight machine zones and cardio areas that can serve group fitness needs as well as treadmill type machines to fit user needs. This space serves people of all ages, depending on the activity, but primarily adults.

Senior spaces are now used for more community program type activities, but are primarily designated during the daytime hours for seniors’ activities, becoming program spaces for music, arts, performing arts, E-sports, STEM

programs, cooking programs, life skill classes and maker spaces for youth and adults after 4pm.

The key to all these changes starts with a clear understanding that any space in a multigenerational centre is not designated for a single purpose but for multiple functions within the same space, targeted to multiple generations, which can change based on the lifecycle of the program and are adaptable with little effort. This makes the spaces in the building better, with a higher level of use — usually at the 70 percent level. By that I mean that of the 100+ hours a facility is open a week, all spaces are used at more than 70 percent of capacity, which strengthens the value of a membership, a season pass or a daily pass.

Today multigenerational community centres are continually increasing in size and can often incorporate ice centres for hockey and ice skating, fieldhouses for soccer, lacrosse, basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball, to maximise play year round. The challenge is getting the capital resources to build these multigenerational centres. Many park and recreation agencies have sought partnerships with school districts to help build fieldhouses for year-round sports training, and with hospital to build rehab pools and services inside of these multigenerational centres.

Developing a feasibility study in advance of building a facility is a must in

Image Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture

today’s world. Once the multigenerational centre is deemed feasible, it is then important to build a business plan that outlines every aspect of managing the site. This would include a full year-round program plan for each space in the building, a cost-of-service assessment to price programs and the facility correctly to meet public expectation for how it will operate and be managed, and to what level if any it will be subsidised. This requires a complete business culture to be present in the building, and all managers and program staff need to understand

how their space is to be used, managed and paid for on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. If this occurs, the community will embrace it and support it.

The winners in a multigenerational community centre are the community.

Even those that may not use it know that is supports a large community need — like a library — in promoting a healthy lifestyle and bringing the community together, providing opportunities to meet new people, learn new skills and get healthier, all while providing a long-term community facility that will last more than 60 years.

PATHS FOR ALL

M

any readers will recall Kevin Lafferty through his appearance as a keynote speaker at the PLA National Conference in Adelaide and as author of articles in this Journal. Kevin has recently joined Paths for All from Scottish Forestry where he was the National Policy Advisor for Access, Health and Recreation. Kevin is passionate about walking and believes walking is the natural choice to improve people’s lives.

Kevin has extensive experience in working across a range of legislative and community health and wellbeing agendas. His decision to join Paths for All comes from his conviction in a vision for Scotland to be a walking nation, where everyone has the opportunity to be active every day.

Speaking about his appointment,

Marcus Sangster, Chair of Paths for All’s Board of Directors said, “The Paths for All board are delighted to welcome Kevin. He brings experience from an extensive and successful 25-year career within the public sector, having demonstrated inspirational leadership from his current role at Scottish Forestry and previously within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s physical activity team. Kevin has an invaluable mix of the right skills, connections, and experience to ensure Paths for All will thrive as we lead the way out of the pandemic to a happier, healthier greener Scotland.”

The role of Paths for All’s Chief Executive Officer became vacant following the sudden death of Ian Findlay CBE in March 2021.

We hope that Kevin continues his occasional contribution to the Parks & Leisure Australasia Journal.

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 43

WHY SOCIETY NEEDS NATURE LESSONS GLEAMED FROM RESEARCH DURING COVID-19

T

his project was a collaborative piece of work between Natural Resources Wales, Forest Research, Natural England, NatureScot and the Environment Agency. It aimed to bring together and summarise research conducted in each organisation concerning how people, both adults and children, visited green and blue natural spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and their experiences of this.

The Covid-19 pandemic and associated “lockdown” restrictions in 2020 impacted people’s lives in many ways, including how often people visited nature and their experiences of it. This report concerns how people visited green and blue natural spaces and their experiences of this during 2020.

MAIN FINDINGS Outdoor visits | There was a polarised picture of experience. While some people’s interaction with nature increased during the pandemic, others

visited nature less or not at all. Overall, the number of adults visiting natural spaces in England in spring 2020 was lower than expected. This was also found in the site-based data from Wales.

Six in ten children in England reported spending less time outdoors since the start of coronavirus, more than double those who spent more time outside. In both England and Scotland, staying at home to stop coronavirus spreading and adhering to government restrictions was the top reason for not spending time in nature.

This was also reflected in case study responses to site visits in Wales, along with Covid-related land management restrictions such as carpark closures.

Socio-economic status, age and health status also had an influence on people’s ability to access nature.

Place and activity | Urban greenspaces were the most frequently visited of all natural spaces. Walking was the most popular activity, enjoyed by the majority of adults.

Benefits | Seventy-four percent of adults in England took more time to notice and engage with everyday nature.

In Scotland, there were increased levels of participation in watching wildlife and nature engagement activities.

Green and natural spaces were seen as places that should encourage mental health and exercise by 89 percent of people in England. Seventy percent of people in Scotland reported mental health benefits from enjoying nature. Qualitative data from Wales also reflected wellbeing and mental health benefits.

Issues and problems | Unprecedented visitor numbers at some sites created recreational “hot spots”. Negative environmental impacts experienced ranged

44 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

from unsuccessful breeding of rare bird populations to overcrowding and littering at bathing waters and greenspace sites.

CONCLUSIONS The evidence in the report clearly highlights that increased engagement with nature significantly helped to support many people in maintaining their physical and mental health and wellbeing during the restrictions and stresses of living through the global pandemic. The seismic increase in visitor numbers at many of the nation’s most important natural spaces indicates that there is unmet demand for outdoor recreation space, both for local (daily) use and further away (planned trips and activities). This has brought a number of environmental and land management issues to the fore.

Encouraging people to benefit from the great outdoors, while at the same time protecting nature, needs strategic planning and adequate investment in more suitable places for a range of outdoor recreation activities and the resources to maintain their quality.

The publication Why Society Needs Nature is available online through PLA’s PaRC library. To view the full report visit parksleisure.com.au/library/

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PLA ADVISORY

I

t’s the end of another hectic, turbulent and unpredictable year, and even though we lived through a number of the same themes as last year, we don’t feel we were any better prepared for a repeat performance this year. Perhaps it was the unrealised hope that this year would see a return to ‘normal’. However, it is now abundantly clear that normal as we knew it may not exist anymore.

As a National Advisory, and being leisure and recreation planners at heart, we spent a good part of this year planning how we can best support our fellow Parks & Leisure Australia members, the National board and our industry.

Even though Covid-19 has thrown up challenges that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it has also seen our industry become more agile and embrace more opportunities. Most of us have moved online — with the PLA Advisory members leading on this. A number of universities have ramped up their industry engagement, and have engaged with us to value-add into government policy development. Even state government departments have created online opportunities to work together. PLA Advisory is planning on this becoming the “new normal”, and certainly sees the value in this pivot from pre-Covid business as usual.

Given the massive disruption of the past two years, the PLA Advisory team came to the conclusion that we need to discard our current agenda and reform our agenda to understand the impact of the pandemic on our industry and members. The pandemic continues to test every aspect of our lives, and our industry is no different, as we see a range of new challenges

for how we provide physical activity and recreation opportunities for our communities on a regular basis.

At the final National board meeting for 2021, the revised PLA Advisory terms of reference was endorsed. It confirmed the role of Advisory as: “To host conversations with the parks and leisure membership on industry issues, coordinate research and gain expert advice to inform the PLA National Board on strategic approaches to these industry issues.”

We believe that the best way to fulfil our new role is to connect with our members through a series of facilitated conversations, to understand how the past few years have affected your part of the industry. From there we intend to work together with our regional councils, National Board, PLA members and our industry partners to work out the best way to meet the new and constantly evolving challenges we continue to face.

In a practical sense the PLA Advisory team will:

46 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

• Facilitate opportunities for broader PLA membership engagement in strategic activities, including through discussions and other programmed activities at the PLA National Conference and with Generate Network and PLA State Boards.

• Identify industry issues and trends at a national level.

• Determine appropriate strategic approaches to industry issues.

• Establish Project Working Parties to address industry and organisation issues as appropriate.

We look forward to talking with you next year and working together to continue to provide what appears to be increasingly important physical activity and recreation opportunities for Australians. From the PLA Advisory team, we wish you a safe and happy festive season and all the best wishes for a sedate and successful 2022.

John Senior PLA Advisory Chair

BOOK REVIEWS WENDY SIMPSON, HUMAN KINETICS AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

MENTAL TRAINING FOR ULTRARUNNING

By Addie J Bracy In Mental Training for Ultrarunning, sport psychology consultant Addie Bracy combines her firsthand coaching and running experience, along with profiles of ultrarunners who’ve experienced the highs and lows of the sport, to explain what you need to know and practice in order to finish the race. You’ll learn techniques to prepare for the mental and emotional challenges you may encounter, and more than 35 activities that will help train your mind so you can achieve your ultimate running goals.

ISBN: 9781718200173.

Published 23 June 2021

DIMENSIONS OF LEISURE FOR LIFE 2E

By Tyler Tapps, Mary Sara Wells & Mary Parr (Editors) Dimensions of Leisure for Life 2E guides students through a study of leisure as a multidisciplinary field. The book uses social science methods and current research — with examples from psychology, geography, anthropology, and sociology — to study leisure and its connection to individual and societal health and wellbeing. Ancillary materials are free to course adopters, including chapter overviews, research assignments, key-term flash cards, and chapter quizzes that are automatically graded to assess understanding of critical concepts.

ISBN: 9781492598497.

Published December 2021

DISCOUNT FOR PLA MEMBERS Use the code PLA10 to gain an extra 10% off the already discounted print price of these two books at booktopia.com.au.

This code is valid from 1 December 2021 to 31 March 2022

UPCOMING COURSES & EVENTS AUSTRALIA 2022 SPORTS TECH CONFERENCE 13 May 2022 Brisbane, Queensland sportstechworldseries.com/conference-australia

SPLASH! POOL & SPA TRADE EXPO 2022 22 June-23 June 2022 Gold Coast, Queensland splashexpo.com.au

WORLD ROSE CONVENTION 2022 27 October-3 November 2022 Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, South Australia wrc22.aomevents.com.au

NEW ZEALAND

INTERNATIONAL

INTERNATIONAL WORKING GROUP (IWG) ON WOMEN AND SPORT WORLD CONFERENCE 5-8 May 2022 New Zealand International Convention Centre (NZICC), Auckland womeninsport.org.nz/iwg-2018-2022

17TH WORLD LEISURE CONGRESS 2022 12 Dec-16 Dec 2022 Dunedin, New Zealand worldleisure.org/congress

GLOBAL WELLNESS SUMMIT 2022 30 October-2 November 2022 Tel Aviv, Israel globalwellnesssummit.com

AAPA EXPO - INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AMUSEMENT PARKS AND ATTRACTIONS ANNUAL CONVENTION & TRADE SHOW 14 November-18 November 2022 Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida, USA iaapa.org/expos/iaapa-expo

Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 47

RESEARCH CONNECTIONS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

SPATIAL DATA REQUIREMENTS FOR METROPOLITAN SPATIAL PLANNING IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA: CHALLENGES FOR EVIDENCE-INFORMED POLICY-MAKING AND MONITORING (2021) Authors Dühr, S, Gilbert, H & Peters, S Abstract Comprehensive spatial plans require a wide range of high quality spatial data, but planning requirements are not always considered in the increasing number of spatial data initiatives. This paper presents a framework for systematically analysing the availability and quality of spatial datasets in urban planning, and applies this to the example of the metropolitan strategy for Greater Adelaide, South Australia. The findings reveal significant gaps in important spatial data that are publicly available.

This is especially concerning given the need to better understand integrated and multi-scalar planning policies such as for mixed use developments and polycentric urban structures.

Published Planning, Practice and Research Download tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 .1080/02697459.2021.1901397 Cost $45 (USD)

WHY IS DETERMINING PERIURBAN AREA BOUNDARIES CRITICAL FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT? (2021) Authors Mortoja, MG & Yigitcanlar, T Abstract In the age of climate change, for many cities around the globe seeking sustainable urban development is a key necessity.

Nonetheless, many fail to develop effective policies when it comes to peri-urban growth, where these areas experience rapid land use transition, and become urbanized in a short period of time. Such transition poses a risk to sustainable urban development. This study provides evidence on the consequences of not clearly determining peri-urban area boundaries by placing a metropolitan region under the microscope.

The study uses a remote sensing approach to determine peri-urban growth in the Brisbane Metropolitan

Region, Australia. The changes that took place for a period of 30 years (1989–2019) are undertaken to map the level of peri-urbanization of the case study region, and the peri-urban area boundary is compared with the regional plan’s growth boundaries.

The study findings inform that: (a) There exists a significant contrast between the actual peri-urban area boundary and the boundary estimate upon which the regional plan bases its policies; (b) The lack of a clearly demarcated peri-urban area boundary caused the transition of significant size greenfield sites to urban uses, and; (c) Not clearly determining periurban area boundaries jeopardized achieving the region’s sustainable development goals.

Published Journal of Environmental Planning and Management Download tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 .1080/09640568.2021.1978405 Cost $45 (USD)

INTERNATIONAL

TIME FOR ‘GREEN’ DURING COVID-19? INEQUITIES IN GREEN AND BLUE SPACE ACCESS, VISITATION AND FELT BENEFITS (2021) Authors Astell-Burt, T & Feng, X Abstract We hypothesized that visits to green and blue spaces may have enabled respite, connection and exercise during the Covid-19 pandemic, but such benefits might have been inequitably distributed due to differences in financial difficulties, opportunities to work from home, and localized restrictions in spatial mobility generated by ‘lockdowns’. A nationally representative online and telephone survey conducted in 12–26 October on the Social Research Centre’s Life in Australia™ panel (aged ≥ 18 y, 78.8% response, N = 3043) asked about access, visitation, and felt benefits from green and/or blue spaces. Increasing financial difficulty was associated with less time in and fewer visits to green and/or blue spaces, as well as fewer different types visited. Financial difficulty was also associated with feelings that visits to green and/or blue space had less benefit for maintaining

48 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Autumn 2022

social connection. Working from home was associated with more frequent and longer visitation to green and/ or blue spaces, as well as discovery of ones previously unvisited. Working from home was also associated with increased levels of exercise and respite resulting from visits to green and/or blue spaces. Residents of Melbourne, a city of 4.9 million who were in ‘lockdown’ at the time of the survey, appeared more likely to benefit from visits to green and/or blue spaces than residents of Sydney, Australia’s largest city at 5.2 million, who were not in lockdown. Residents of Melbourne compared with Sydney reported consistently increased visitation of, discovery of, and greater levels of various felt benefits derived from green and/or blue spaces, including more respite, connection, and exercise.

Comparatively shorter distances to preferred green and/or blue spaces and closure of alternative settings at the time of the survey completion in Melbourne compared with Sydney may provide partial explanation, though more acute responses to experiencing green and/or blue spaces within highly cognitively demanding antecedent conditions posed by lockdown are also plausible and warrant further investigation with other health indicators. These results were robust to adjustment for a range of covariates including preferences for natural settings, which were consistently associated with greater levels of green and/or blue space visitation and felt benefits. Collectively, these results indicate that parallel efforts to generate (or renew) felt connection to natural settings, to increase working from home opportunities, and to mitigate financial difficulties may be important to help maximize the population health benefits of urban planning strategies intended to improve the availability of, and to reduce inequities in access to, green and blue spaces. Benefits felt more commonly by people living through lockdown underlines the role previous investments in green and blue space have played in enabling coping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Published International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Download mdpi.com/16604601/18/5/2757 Cost FREE

EXPLORING THE DESIGN, QUALITY AND USE OF COMMUNAL AREAS IN APARTMENT DEVELOPMENTS (2021) Authors Kleeman, A, Giles-Corti, B, Gunn, L, Hooper, P and Foster, S Abstract Population growth and urbanisation are contributing to the densification of cities globally, including a proliferation of apartment developments. While many developments include shared spaces and facilities, little is known about their design, quality or use. Using a novel desktop audit approach, we objectively identified communal area design features and examined their association with residents’ use of communal areas in apartment developments (n = 113) across Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. For residents with outdoor areas (n = 1039), use was associated with ten features, including greenery, pools and seating. For residents with indoor areas (n = 283), use was associated with four features, including a ‘green’ outlook and ground floor location. Features were combined into quality scores, where each unit increase was associated with greater odds of outdoor (OR = 1.37, 95% CI = 1.28–1.47) and indoor (OR = 1.91, 95% CI = 1.52–2.42) area use.

These results suggest that the delivery of high-quality communal areas can encourage use, which in turn, may have implications for residents’ social opportunities and outcomes. The findings also have policy and design implications, suggesting that the provision of communal space alone may not be enough to encourage use without the design features or amenities that appeal to residents.

Published Cities & Health Download tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 .1080/23748834.2021.2001169 Cost $45 (USD)

STRATEGIC SPATIAL PLANNING FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – SWEDISH PLANNERS’ INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY (2021)

Authors Trygg, K & Wenander, H Abstract This article advocates the need for strategic spatial planning practices to cope with the crises of climate change that confront cities and regions today. Planners face sustainability challenges regarding their ability to plan for the cities of tomorrow. The aim of this article is to analyse how institutional conditions can enable the planners’ strategic spatial planning for sustainable development in Swedish municipalities. We will use institutional capacity as a theoretical framework to understand how the planners use planning instruments while planning for sustainable development. Our empirical research builds on four Swedish municipalities where we have set out to explore knowledge resources, relational resources and mobilization capacity for analysing planners’ use of planning instruments for sustainable development. Our results indicate that the institutional capacity in the municipalities does not enable the planners to strive for sustainable development. Planners in Swedish municipalities have many ideas, visions and initiatives for sustainable development, but are often not informed of the political agenda or how to prioritize. For achieving strategic spatial planning, the planners will need a more clear political will and mandate to act and prioritize.

Published European Planning Studies Download rtandfonline.com/doi/full/1 0.1080/09654313.2021.2001792 Cost FREE

capitals, Oslo and Copenhagen, and interviews with stakeholders, this paper elaborates on the cemetery as a special type of public space. Our findings demonstrate the potential of cemeteries’ contribution to the urban environment as multifunctional public spaces – the trajectory envisioned by the two municipalities.

Published Planning Theory & Practice Download tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 .1080/14649357.2021.1993973 Cost FREE

CALL FOR ARTICLE ABSTRACTS Abstracts of research projects of interest to PLA members are always welcome and can be forwarded to research@parksleisure.com.au

THE FUTURE OF URBAN CEMETERIES AS PUBLIC SPACES: INSIGHTS FROM OSLO AND COPENHAGEN (2021) Authors Grabalov, P & Nordh, H Abstract Public spaces are believed to make cities more liveable, healthy and socially equal. To date, discussions about public spaces have primarily revolved around emblematic types, such as squares and parks, while little attention has been paid to cemeteries.

Drawing on a review of public space scholarship and cemetery research, an analysis of strategies for cemetery development in two Scandinavian Autumn 2022 | AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE 49

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