A guide for creating healthy built environments in regional NSW

Regional NSW is full of vibrant and diverse cities, towns and villages located across coastal areas, rolling tablelands, alpine snow fields and vast outback areas. Good urban design has a crucial role to play in regional NSW to ensure quality of life in all these places and to help create healthy, happy and prosperous communities.

The Urban Design Guide for Regional NSW (PDF, 9.4MB) has been prepared specifically for regional NSW and provides guidance for creating healthy built environments. The guide recognises and celebrates the diversity of urban environments, natural landscapes, climates and communities that exist across this vast area.

It also acknowledges that the unique conditions are being challenged by external factors such as climate which impacts the communities and natural environment. The Guide plays a role to assist in developing sustainable approaches to mitigate these impacts.

The guide plays an important role in implementing the nine Regional Plans for NSW by responding to actions to prepare regional urban design guidelines for planning, designing and developing healthy built environments. The Guide also builds on the seven design objectives of Better Placed.

The preparation of the guide has been a collaboration between the Government Architect NSW and the Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment, and has been informed by a survey of councils in regional NSW issued in late 2017.

Implementation of the Guide and its concepts will occur in a number of ways and will be communicated through a series of webinars and other activities. The program for these is to be announced.

View the Guide (PDF, 9.4MB)

The Guide is supported by ten case studies which showcase best practice in a range of project types in each of the regions. The case studies play a role in describing how different urban design priorities have been implemented by design teams with their clients.

The links to the case studies are below:

Webinar – Good Urban Design (The Levee Maitland and Riverlink Building)

Watch this webinar as the second one in the series on Urban Design for Regional NSW, explores one of the ten case studies to support the guide.

5 November 2020

Planning Connects Webinar 2020: Urban Design for Regional NSW

Watch this webinar to find out more about Urban Design for Regional NSW.