Working with the City Renewal Authority we delivered community and stakeholder engagement to inform the design and development of the new Acton Waterfront precinct.
The National Capital Plan envisages Acton Waterfront as a vibrant cultural and entertainment precinct on a waterfront promenade. The area will create a new city neighbourhood, extending the city to the lake with a cosmopolitan mixture of shops, businesses, cafes, recreation, tourist activities and accommodation.
Starting with a largely blank canvas on the shores of Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin, we partnered with the City Renewal Authority to gather input from community and stakeholders to inform the early design and development of this site.
Embedding First Nations principles was a key component of this project. Working with Indigenous business, Yerrabingin, we delivered an approach for collaborative design with the Dhawura Ngunnawal Caring for Country Committee, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body, to create the Acton Waterfront Estate's Connecting with Country design narratives. This included the development of a Caring for Country overlay to the Project Master Plan, which shows how the principles are activated throughout the project.
We gathered feedback from a diverse range of stakeholders and people in the community, through in-person and online activities including workshops, pop-up sessions, focus groups and via the ACT Government YourSay platform. This was supported by social media and media management to ensure broad all of Canberra knew about the consultation.
The insights collected from this phase of engagement have informed the design of the park areas within the precinct and will continue to inform the future planning of the associated residential estate.
Information on this project is available at Acton Waterfront | YourSay ACT