The landscape architecture position at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is that this realisation has the effect of shifting a substantial part of the focus of urban design away from “blockbuster” urban renewal projects associated with international events or massive post-industrial redevelopment to more subtle design interventions within existing urban fabrics. Interventions that have the stimulation of local economic development and community involvement in the spirit of Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992) as the prime motivator replace the popularly perceived role of landscape architecture as the public realm cosmetician in the urban design team. Within this context, advanced landscape design studios at QUT have been exploring the idea of a paradigm that links this expanded view of urban design with the emerging theories of Local Economic Development (LED). This exploration is an important contribution to QUT’s commitment to using the Landscape Design Studio as a site for research (Armstrong 1999).

The final stages of postgraduate education in landscape architecture at the QUT require students to engage with the issues of landscape design in as many of its facets as possible. Most of the project briefs are authentic and involve real people and problems. They are designed to ensure synthesis of the diverse skills and bodies of knowledge to which the students have been exposed and ensure the students must work with and justify their design proposals to their community “clients”. Design studios addressing the urban landscape have followed this model of more than a decade with a continually shifting range of emphases depending on the nature and context of the particular urban location studied. In all of these studies there has been a central theme that there should be a strong nexus between urban design and the need for diversified local economic development to make communities more sustainable. This idea has been strengthened since 1997 by designing the studio to explicitly address the proposition that the combined theories of urban design and local economic development offer a powerful paradigm to explore community sustainability. This proposition requires the students to justify their proposed urban design interventions in terms of their potential to assist local economic development and sustainability issues and not in superficial terms of cosmetic improvements to urban landscape amenity.

A number of the earlier studies were concerned with rural centres that were separated from the major metropolitan aggregations centred on the City of Brisbane but were located within a one hour railway commuting radius of the city centre. These were towns that had strong rural traditions dating back to the earliest times of European settlement in Queensland in the mid 19th century. They also often contained rich layers of the history of the colonial origins of the modern state within their cultural landscape. Because of the pressures of urban growth and their commuting proximity to the city many of these towns were becoming attractive to blue collar workers in particular as relatively low cost dormitory suburbs. The influx of these new residents generated tensions arising from two main issues. While extolling the virtues of “rural” living these new residents were expecting direct access to all of the services they had previously enjoyed in the larger metropolitan centres. The pressures from these expectations resulted in changes to the traditional country town character. Long-term residents often regarded these changes with deep suspicion as representing a threat to their preferred lifestyle. A frequent strategy for mediating this conflict has been to identify areas of common interest across the diversity of community factions. This tactic establishes a foundation for building cooperative relationships to promote local initiatives that positively address the tensions, re-build social cohesion and add to opportunities for local economic diversity.

Out of these studies grew the second proposition that the urban landscape design studio can also provide a rich medium to explore a range of contemporary issues in cities and towns. From these beginnings more recent studios in this series explore any or all of four primary questions that guide their potential outcomes depending on the study area context:
•  Can community design involve socially disadvantaged transient populations on the periphery?
•  Can the design studio develop urban design interventions that act as a catalyst for new forms of employment?
•  Can the design studio develop innovative solutions to environmental sustainability?
•  Can the design studio explore the tensions between the centre and periphery of poly-nucleated cities?
Within the framework of these propositions and the questions they raise, the studios are carefully designed to be responsive to a number of closely inter-related objectives that have clearly identified educational outcomes in the studio outputs.

The studios have four primary educational objectives.
Objective 1
•  to develop an understanding of emerging theory in urban design and local economic development; and generate a high level of creative problem solving capability.
Critical inputs supporting the studio include:
•  an extensive and wide-ranging bibliography of relevant texts and recent writings on design theory, social planning, economic theory and cultural studies;
•  collections of the more important general readings listed in the bibliography;
•  a series of student seminars thematically structured around selected readings of direct relevance to the particular studio focus; and
•  a series of lectures addressing LED and other specific urban design themes that rounds out the theoretical framework to more informed and receptive studio participants.

Objective 2 – to explore advanced concepts of urban ecology and develop innovative approaches to environmental sustainability.
Part of the seminar series is structured around relevant aspects of this theme to expose particpants to emerging best practice. This is in turn reinforced in the studio exercises to enable students to explore applied design development. They are encouraged to use critical observation, apply soundly based site planning principles to explore options widely and develop innovative strategies for communities and legislative bodies. The studios also actively encourage the application of water sensitive urban design principles, which are a major emphasis in parallel advanced construction and practice studies.

Objective 3 – to engender understanding of community processes and local economics.
Focused readings supported by a specialist series of lectures and directed investigative research are collectively designed to develop critical sensitivity to notions of community and working with communities. The program also explores the changing nature of work in modern society that is driving agendas for local economic development worldwide.

Objective 4 – to understand the complexity of urban issues and to understand the role design of the public domain in contributing to collective urban qualities.
This is a core theme of the student seminar series and is brought into applied focus on the study area through:
•  studying current public domain debates and state of the art concepts of urbanism;
•  the exploration of current cultural studies on urban periphery issues and unemployment;
•  discussion with community leaders and field workers; and
•  exploration of the public domain for the community, the environment and for multiple territorial interests.

Typical studio outputs are:
•  A series of short but intense speculative design scenarios on a range of themes relevant to the drawing from critical investigative and analytical skills and propositions for a diverse and often conflicting range of issues. The creative use and expression of the physical, social, and economic aspects of the study area, and its context is required in generating the output of each scenario.
•  Development of a considered theoretical framework derived from a range of current writings on urban issues on which development of an urban strategy and subsequent detailed design is to be explicitly based.
•  Development of design proposals at a strategic or master planning level to address the wider scope of issues identified in the studio brief.
•  Development of detailed design vignettes that illustrate the kinds of urban futures that might result from the particular strategic approaches to both urban design and local economic development.

The program has generated some very creative results from the very best students many of whom are mature aged with existing degrees in other areas and some examples are outlined here. Despite the opportunity for the design studios to be “speculative spaces”1 limitations that require constant vigilance in getting the best out of the student cohort at large have been identified. These limitations include:
•  Prevention of group reflection on theoretical issues at the early design exploration stage due to limited studio contact times and a resultant tendency for some individuals to compartmentalise theory from design development and not achieve proper synthesis .2
•  The influence of personal bias towards the concept of sustainability that prioritised social, environmental or economic issues with the result that only the most innovative students attempt strategies that address all issues in a balanced and holistic way.
•  The suppression of advanced and innovative environmental design proposals because they were likely to be seen as unrealistic by conservative local government officers who frequently dominate the “client” group .3
•  Lack of practical experience and understanding of the potential roles of the public and private sectors to bring about change in the urban environment.
•  Empathy with a community largely uninformed about alternative urban futures. This frequently encourages “safe” conventional solutions at the expense of “pushing the boundaries” to explore new concepts of creative design.
•  Inability to discriminate between the differing characteristics of the public domain in the centre and on the periphery of cities.

Notwithstanding these limitations the program is providing a challenging learning experience relevant to life long learning objectives. It is also providing another benefit in the form of public education. The fact that most of these studios are conducted within real communities means that the participating communities have their awareness raised about the potentials of a range of alternative futures. Many of these possibilities will be very different from those that follow conventional wisdom through application of normal local government policy or commissioned consultancies. It has been our experience that these studios are frequently followed by more informed community debates that result in consultancies framed around very well developed briefs reflecting this awareness.