BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA The Janus-faced City: Brisbane from Expo 88 to the Queen’s Wharf Casino Resort

This project analyses the urban development of the south and north banks of the river that dissects one of Australia’s fastest-growing cities, Brisbane. The South Bank’s development as the city’s cultural precinct began with the construction of the state’s Queensland Art Gallery in 1982 and its appeal broadened after Expo 88, when a wide range of facilities for outdoor leisure were added. South Bank has since become a spectacular collective infrastructure and a unique set of public and institutional spaces, attracting people of diverse ethnicity, class, and age. In 2015, the State Government announced the development of a private casino and resort at Queen’s Wharf, on the north bank of the Brisbane River. The Premier of Queensland claimed that the complex would transform Brisbane’s Central Business District in the same way the South Bank development did after Expo 88. Both projects are grandiose in scale and aim to attract international and domestic business and tourists. Yet, the north bank has a fundamentally different relationship to public space. The shifting political context of, ambitions around, and responses to the two projects are symptomatic of global social and economic change. Our interest is in the impact of these political changes on the built environment. With the two precincts set to be connected by a pedestrian bridge, our study investigates the potential each bank has to influence the other.