Central to Eveleigh

Futurecity’s Sydney office was commissioned by UrbanGrowth NSW in 2016 to create a creative placemaking strategy for the Central to Eveleigh Urban Transformation and Transport project. The NSW Government recently allocated UrbanGrowth NSW’s projects into three separate government organisations.

Central to Eveleigh is a large urban renewal project of approximately 50 hectares of government-owned land in and around the rail corridor from Central to Erskineville Stations. The area encompasses a historic and creative group of neighbourhoods, within an expanding and evolving city.

Futurecity was commissioned to set out a creative placemaking approach in order to achieve a high-level curatorial vision that would inform future detailed plans for North Eveleigh, Waterloo and Redfern Station Precincts. This process commenced with a detailed internal audit of existing project documentation and interviews of key members of the project team.

The Futurecity team reviewed the ideas set out in urban framework documents, city-wide and State policies and neighbouring masterplans and drew out key placemaking ideas and principles, values and expectations. Our team analysed local history and heritage, local communities, and current and emerging trends across the creative sector, and monitored relevant news that might impact or influence creative placemaking for Central to Eveleigh.

Futurecity also conducted interviews with external stakeholders, including local Indigenous community leaders, and gathered qualitative data about place, culture and change. A cultural audit was undertaken, and detailed cultural mapping completed. Futurecity also led workshops with a Creative Placemaking Advisory Group, with whom we developed a set of cultural principles to provide a creative and cultural vision for the area.

The final Creative Placemaking Strategy contained detailed analysis of specific precinct opportunities and characters. Functioning at both a visionary and practical level, the strategy offered a narrative and principles for the area, to support the promotion of a strong sense of place. The strategy outlined the ways in which the cultural principles could be realised through future planning, to express and animate the diverse stories, histories, communities and future vision for the site.

The Strategy was developed in direct response to stakeholder engagement and community advice, with the objective of animating the sites histories, connecting to local communities and building a vibrant and creative and collaborative place for new communities to the site.

Christian Boltanski, Chance (detail), 2014, Carriageworks, Sydney. Archive Zan Wimberley (CC 3.0)