Abstract
This paper engages with debates about tropical cities and climate responsive design to consider the emergence of two local government master plans and one planning scheme provision explicitly addressing the tropical climate in Cairns, Australia. The undergirding concept of these initiatives is a terminology of Tropical Urbanism, a simultaneously environmental and social/cultural term that captures issues such as climate, lifestyle and identity in the constitution of the urban fabric. Through a detailed reading of the documents, combined with interviews with local architects and planners, this paper positions Tropical Urbanism as an environmentally aware version of New Urbanism and as a distinctive language of urban design emerging in the regional context of tropical Australia. Place-based initiatives such as these are important to improving the design outcomes and sustainability of regional cities, and we suggest Tropical Urbanism could be further reinforced by the social/cultural and political nuances of a more progressive Critical Regionalist approach.
Highlights
This paper engages with debates about tropical cities and climate responsive design to consider the emergence of two local government master plans and one planning scheme provision explicitly addressing the tropical climate in Cairns, Australia
In this paper we suggest that engaging with the tropical climate is encouraging a range of professionals to think across all scales of tropical urban design, not just the architecture of individual buildings
Such thinking is evident in the language of Tropical Urbanism: a design vocabulary of shade, greenery and breezes that works across buildings, streets, blocks and neighbourhoods to reflect the distinctive context of tropical north Queensland
Summary
The consideration of local climatic conditions had been a routine aspect of earlier settlement design, but a variety of factors led to its declining significance over time (Eliasson, 2000). In former Anglo-European colonies, such as tropical Australia, this scenario unfolded in particular ways, primarily in terms of altering early climate- adapted architecture and settlement forms through importing designs from far off, mostly temperate, places – including from major centres in the Australian south, which were in turn influenced by the Global North. Did this alter ways of living, but it inhibited local-regional innovation in the planning and design field (Bridgeman, 2003;; Tay, 2001;; Chang & King, 2011). We turn to defining and giving form to Tropical Urbanism as an emerging, place-based concept in Australia to explore these ideas further
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