Pastures of plenty

Public land and public spaces:
Management and exploitation of the Adelaide park lands in the new century.

Published 2024

This book is about a small but unique city – Adelaide, South Australia. It is surrounded by something very few others have – a globally renowned, green belt of park lands, conceived in 1837, a year after the city was settled. But access to this estate has been exploited and alienated ever since, despite many community protests.

This work is the first of its kind to emerge in the new century, exposing South Australian politicians’ and planners’ exploitative secrecy and duplicity across a 20-year period, 1998 to 2018. In 57 chapters across 11 sections it explores how commercial, state and local government interests have manipulated Adelaide’s inner-city public land management to their benefit.

The looming 200th anniversary of Adelaide’s 1836 birth and that of the 1837 park lands plan is a timely prompt for its citizens to confront a long history of park lands raids and ruses at odds with lofty principles espoused during that period by those in charge. Here is a fresh and revealing study, not only of the recent past, but also delivering recommendations that may lead to a more transparent management future for this much-admired southern city asset.  Read more….