City Hill Park: From overlooked space to lived public place

Reimagining City Hill. Join Salon Canberra and the City Renewal Authority for a conversation on the future of Canberra's civic heart.

For a century, City Hill has been a space that Canberra never learned to use.

Sitting in the centre of Walter Burley Griffin’s geometry, City Hill was imagined as the civic heart - and a counterweight to parliamentary power up the road.

Encircled by the fast flow of Vernon Circle, the five-hectare green island at its heart became a place to drive past, rather than wander into. A hill designed as a gathering place turned into a roundabout.

But City Hill must become a loved, contemporary green place in the heart of our city that is well integrated with the surrounding cultural and civic places. The fast evolution of these places means this is the time to act on City Hill.

Over the next two decades, the city centre is changing shape with Light Rail Stage 2A, new workplaces and cultural spaces, and thousands more residents, workers and students. City Hill will be surrounded by people who need it.

The City Renewal Authority’s 2024 Ideas Exhibition drew 600-plus submissions and 69 designs with one repeated message: “Create places for us to stay, not just walk past.”

This Salon Canberra conversation takes the next step, in partnership with the City Renewal Authority. We’ll explore:

• How the City Hill Concept Masterplan can transform a peripheral park into a lived public place.
• How community ownership and co-design can ensure everyone feels at home.
• Why culture, comfort, safety and delight are everyday invitations.
• Opportunities to shape a more democratic, equitable experience of heritage – incorporating First Nations and contemporary heritage.
• The value of green spaces – the World Health Organisation recommends all people reside within 300m of green space. With extensive new residential and commercial populations residing near City Hill, how can we support them?
• What parts of the Griffin’s and Weston’s original floorplans still work and what needs rearranging.
• How light rail, connectivity and activation can be catalytic.

Speakers:

· Mike Day, Co-Founder, Sharp | Day

· Ron Jones, Director, Jones & Whitehead

· Catherine Townsend, ACT Government Architect

· Ashley van den Heuvel, Discipline Lead UC Culture and Heritage, University of Canberra

Moderated by Catherine Carter, Managing Director, Salon Canberra.

No charge to attend. Non-alcoholic drinks and canapes provided.

More about our speakers:

Mike Day | Co-Founder and Director, Sharp/Day

Mike is a co-founder and director of Sharp | Day, a practice dedicated to Nature Positive Urbanism—embedding biodiversity solutions with timeless walkable neighbourhood design.

Formerly co-founder of Roberts Day, which merged with HATCH | Urban Solutions in 2020, Mike has led multi-disciplinary teams shape award-winning new towns and urban renewal projects across Australia, New Zealand, the UAE and Asia.

Best known as the principal master planner of Ellenbrook New Town, Mike has also led the master planning of the CLARA High-Speed Rail and new city strategy business case for the Australian Federal Government, and has served on planning authority boards and industry committees in both Western Australia and Victoria. A Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Mike was also the 2018 recipient of the Place Leaders Asia Pacific Award for Leadership in Walkable Urbanism, and remains passionate about creating places that are more walkable, more liveable, and more nature-positive for future generations.

Ron Jones, Director, Jones & Whitehead

Ron Jones, a director of Jones & Whitehead Pty Ltd, is a landscape architect focused on public landscapes and urban design. He champions a design approach that reveals a sense of place that is inherent rather than applied, and that prioritises good settings for daily life over special places for special people and occasions. Ron was one of the authors of the 1984 Royal Park Master Plan (Melbourne), which set out a vision for the park that still has widespread community support. Beginning in 1985, he played a key role in developing the City of Melbourne’s urban design strategy and projects supporting that strategy. Since establishing Jones & Whitehead in 2000 he has contributed to projects across Victoria. He is a valued design critic and mentor, was made a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects in 2006, Adjunct Professor of RMIT University in 2010, and has been a member of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect’s design review panels since 2012.

Catherine Townsend, ACT Government Architect

Catherine Townsend is a highly respected architect with 40 years of experience across private practice and government. In 2016, Catherine became the Australian Capital Territory’s first female Government Architect. Her commitment to better places, liveable buildings and sustainable cities is informed by decades of advocacy work with communities and professional organisations. With a commitment to better built outcomes, Catherine Chairs the National Capital Design Review Panel, provides strategic advice to government, and is an expert panel member for significant government projects. Catherine’s leadership and expertise is utilised through appointments to multiple design boards, panels, teaching positions and juries. Collectively, she leverages these roles to advocate for and facilitate high-quality, people and place-responsive design and heritage outcomes. 

Ashley van den Heuvel, Discipline Lead UC Culture and Heritage, University of Canberra

Ashley van den Heuvel is a Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at the University of Canberra, where she teaches Heritage and Indigenous Studies within the Bachelor of Arts. A Walbanja woman from the South Coast of NSW, Ashley brings her cross-cultural experience to her research and teaching, exploring the relationships between visual culture, technology, Country, and storying.

She understands heritage as an active practice - the work of remembering, caring for, and thinking deeply about the places we inhabit through the things we keep. Her scholarship centres on memory-making practices and community engagement.

Ashley is currently completing a PhD at UC titled Flight across Country, part of the ARC Linkage project Heritage of the Air (2024). She holds a Master of Liberal Arts (Visual Culture Research) from ANU and is a Full International Member of Australia ICOMOS, an HDR Member of UC’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, and a member of the First Nations Collaborative Research Web.