City Building Seminar - July

The Enlightened City

Places are complex and uneven. Every city in the world has a chequered past and a present where great urban experiences contrast against others that are underwhelming. The Gold Coast is no different, but at this very sensitive point in civic growth, the most important question is: what kind of city should the Gold Coast become?

The Enlightened City is a presentation by Right Angle Studio’s Strategy and Insights Director Barrie Barton. It reflects upon the Gold Coast’s awakening as a city with potential way beyond tourism and what it might mean to be a genuinely competitive metropolis that is firmly part of the Asian Century and seen as more than an outer-lying suburb of Brisbane.

Based upon Right Angle’s experiences around the world on large city-shaping projects such as Elephant Park and International Quarter London, the transformation of Maboneneng in Johannesburg, One Bangkok, Barangaroo in Sydney and their own developments in Surry Hills, his talk will cover three themes that are essential to the future success of the Gold Coast:

1. Cross-Sectional Communities
2. Third Wave Sustainability
3. Permanent Vacations

Barrie Barton Bio

Barrie Barton is a lawyer by qualification, an entrepreneur by nature and an urban strategist by profession. He has spent most of his adult life thinking about the relationship between the places where we choose to live and the sorts of people we become as a result. In 2005, he set up Right Angle Studio: a business dedicated to understanding and improving life in cities.

At the institutional end of town, Right Angle provides strategic advice to governments, large brands and developers who want to understand what city people will need in the future and how to develop property that can realise value by meeting those demands.

At the fine-grain end of town, Right Angle have started a number of notably successful businesses that they own and operate including Australia’s first ever online city guides, Melbourne’s Rooftop Cinema, Sydney’s Golden Age Cinema & Bar, and most recently The Paramount Recreation Club: a rooftop café and fitness studio that provides busy city people with a beautiful space to improve physical, mental and social health.

Barrie currently calls Sydney home but is engaged in property projects across Australia, in London and Johannesburg where his casual and intelligent approach to creating valuable property is yielding extraordinary results for the industry and end-users alike.

Date: Thursday, 26 July 2018

Time: Midday refreshments, 12.30pm presentation

Venue: HOTA, Home of the Arts, 135 Bundall Rd, Surfers Paradise

RSVP: oca@goldcoast.qld.gov.au