Alternative Visions

An Interview with the Gabba Community Vision Team

In April 2016, after years of revisions, the Queensland State Government announced its largest ever infrastructure project — the Cross-River Rail. Aiming to meet the growing demand for train services in Brisbane, the proposal outlined an increased capacity for inner city rail services, with five new station precincts to be constructed. The stations are to be linked by 10.2 km of new trackwork, including a 5.6 km tunnel under the CBD and Brisbane River.

One of these major precincts is located in the south Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba. Prominently positioned opposite The Gabba Stadium — a premier sports and entertainment centre in Australia — the 5.5 ha site is earmarked to host substantial residential, commercial and retail development alongside the new station. Early promotional material issued by the state government features the shadowy figures of 12 high-rise towers up to 30 storeys tall, standing amongst large swathes of sparsely vegetated open space. Though the state currently retains ownership of the land, the site’s designation as a Priority Development Area (PDA), as well as the impending urban transformation, point towards the clear intention of selling the land off for private development.

It is this site that has become the focal point for a small band of architectural graduates and students in Brisbane. Initiated by Greens Councillor for the Gabba Ward, Jonathan Sri, Gabba Community Vision have produced a number of alternative visions for how the site may be occupied. In the place of monolithic high-rise towers, the visions propose a site that hosts a myriad of public programs — parklands, sporting facilities, workshops, a pool, library, community hall and more. Aiming to stimulate discussion about the future of this public space, the team uses these visions as a catalyst for engaging with the local community, as they seek to collectivise the practice of imagining alternative futures.

Taking advantage of the subversive processes of grassroots action, the small-scale, local engagement of Gabba Community Vision speaks to the broader ambitions of structural change from within and against the discipline of architecture itself. Paradise called the team early in 2021 to discuss the project, its processes, and the possibility of reclaiming architectural agency outside traditional forms of practice.

Paradise Journal (PJ)

How did you come to be involved with this project?

Olivia Daw (OD)

Our involvement in the project was catalysed by the pandemic as well as the 2020 Queensland State Election. Anna (Zervoudakis) approached our local Councillor Jonathan Sri about volunteering her architecture skills to do something useful, and he offered the brief of designing “alternative visions” for the Woolloongabba Cross-River Rail site. As the site is state-owned, it had significant leverage in the election. At the time, the Labor government had not released any information on how the site would be developed, and the pressure of an upcoming election felt like a tangible opportunity to demand transparency.

Anna Zervoudakis (AZ)

In light of COVID, we were all either unemployed, underemployed or working flexibly, which allowed us to team up to develop the alternative visions and form this loose collective. Guided by the brief the local councillor put together, we developed two alternative visions, which were mailed out to the 30,000 residents of the Woolloongabba Ward. This was followed by an invitation to attend a picnic in Raymond Park to discuss them. We wanted to help start an open conversation about the future of the site.

PJ

What did your proposal entail?

OD

We produced two alternative visions, each with an array of different programme, including sporting grounds, parkland, housing and community facilities. At face value, the alternative visions might appear as finalised proposals, but we have always shared them as a question rather than an answer; a tool rather than a solution. Our aim — inspired by our local councillor — is to broaden the parameters of debate. If the only proposal you ever see for the site is 12 high-rise towers, you might be inclined to accept that as the only outcome. By presenting alternative visions — that there could be space for a swimming pool, or a community centre — we hoped to catalyse a collective questioning of how the site can best serve the community.

Isabel Narvaez (IN)

The proposals are architectural but not in the traditional sense — it isn’t a proposition for what buildings should be there, but instead a proposition for a new attitude towards the city’s space and its resources.

Yaseera Moosa (YM)

The site is designated as a Priority Development Area (PDA), which means that when the proposal is released, it will be open to the general public for feedback for a minimum of 30 days. Historically, the submission period is kept to a minimum and isn’t very well advertised. The Queen’s Wharf development in the Brisbane CBD received less than 40 submissions.

We hope that by building preemptive awareness, we’ll be better organised for a collective response. We wanted to start the conversation early so that when the scheme is eventually released, members of the community are sufficiently invested and informed and will be more inclined to make a submission. Many people don’t realise that the PDA designation provides developers with significant concessions on city planning regulations such as height limits. It also takes away legal objection rights that residents or stakeholders might otherwise have.

It’s interesting to see different tiers of government proposing outcomes that contradict each other. The Gabba currently meets less than 50% of Brisbane City Council’s quota of parkland per capita, and this number will dwindle further as the population grows. The local government is struggling to meet its own targets while the state government is designating large swathes of inner-city land to be exempt from regulation. In whose interests is the state government acting?

IN

Where is the ‘dumping ground’ for densification and what is the relationship in our city between increased densification and increased public open space?

PJ

Could you speak about the community engagement you undertook, and what sort of impact this had on the processes and outcomes of your work?

YM

The campaign is rooted in conversation, and it goes both ways. We are trying to share planning and legislative information that can be quite dry in an interesting and accessible way. At the same time, we are trying to collect and organise diverse feedback on how the site can serve the community.

OD

Our first means of engagement was the mail-out to Gabba Ward residents and the subsequent picnic discussion. Since then, we have developed a few different methods of seeking and sustaining engagement. Setting up a website and social accounts on Instagram and Facebook has been a helpful way to share information, and setting up a public survey form has been a good way to collect information from residents and businesses. In person, we have conducted meetings with community groups, such as Murri Watch and Brisbane Housing Company. We also occasionally hand out flyers and field questions at the local supermarket. We are trying to connect with as many people as possible, from all walks of life, so it’s been important to diversify our communication methods.

YM

We’ve also had meetings with architecture and planning practitioners. While that isn’t community engagement per se, it has been really helpful. For example, a Zoom meeting with Brit Andresen highlighted the critical undersupply of tree coverage in the area, which is something we have incorporated into our research. The directors of OFFICE generously shared their experiences from the Left Under campaign which helped us to develop our survey form. We’re really grateful for all the conversations we’ve been able to have.

PJ

What are some of the key differences in ambition between this project and a typical private development?

YM

The main difference is that the site is “public”. We are conscious when we discuss the concept of “state-owned” or “public” land that it is first and foremost stolen land, and that notions of “public” and “private” are very recent impositions.

While the site is currently in state ownership, the PDA designation indicates that most, if not all of it, is intended to be sold to private developers. We are concerned about how this site is developed as much as who will be developing it. Privatising the site immediately confines it to the limits of what is profitable, rather than what is needed.

As our cities are increasingly neoliberalised, our essential infrastructure is being palmed off to the private sector. This is evident in every aspect of urban life, from housing to the rise of privately owned public space. The result is an extreme imbalance, where an excess of residential buildings is propped up in preparation for densification, but the provision of the critical supporting infrastructure such as parks and community facilities isn’t keeping up.

OD

When the private sector does provide these amenities, it comes at a cost. These pseudo public spaces may appear freely accessible but it is ultimately at the discretion of landowners who are free to dictate their own boundaries of “acceptable behaviour” and alter them at will.

YM

Ultimately, the biggest problem in this process is that it’s undemocratic. The state government is designating a “rogue zone” where no one has a right to object, under the bizarre guise that it will serve the community. When the Liberal State Government introduced PDAs through the Economic Development Act in 2012, Labor objected, calling it an “outrageous abuse and concentration of power.”¹ But since coming into power, they haven’t made any amendments to it. They describe PDAs as “parcels of land within Queensland identified for land development to deliver significant benefits to the community.”² There are currently over 30 designated PDAs.

IN

The site is a moat — surrounded by traffic and heavy infrastructure, peripherally zoned for densification, in a pocket of Brisbane starved for public open space. While it remains in the hands of the state government rather than private developers, there are fewer stakeholders/vested interests that allow for an attitude toward providing for the community.

PJ

One of the structural problems we have discussed is the lack of advocating bodies for design in the front end of development, be it in government or private development. Is there an attempt here to offer an alternative to this through grassroots action?

Genevieve Quinn

I think there is a lot to be said for the power of architects, particularly in the design of public space. However, the system we are currently working in, specifically in public projects, tends to prioritise the budget. The brief, by the time it is given to the architects, is also typically prescriptive and precise, so every square metre of space is defined well before the architects are involved.

With a state election coming up at the time, the project grew some attention. The Labor Party ended up pledging a 50% parkland figure for the site — the Greens upped this to 75%. Having that sort of number defined well before the project has commenced is in itself a bit of a win. That 50% or 75% is now open for conversation and design, when previously it may have been broken up into parcelled elements controlled by the client. It will be a great precedent for architects if we can hold on to that tiny bit of power that otherwise would have been taken away by the brief.

YM

There’s a lot of agency to be found beyond disciplinary boundaries — in this case with grassroots action — but we see it achieved elsewhere through planning, advocacy, development and construction. It feels like there’s a lot to be gained from “alternative visions”, for cities and for architecture.