Urban Habitat & Public Realm

Palmers Road Commons

A neighbourhood commons for a corridor that grew faster than its public land: shade structures, forty-metre seat walls, indigenous planting and a water-sensitive swale that now does the drainage work three pits used to do.

Materials were selected with the council’s maintenance team — precast walls that take a vehicle strike, galvanised steel that never needs repainting, planting that survives on rainfall alone. The commons hosts a monthly market run by the residents who campaigned for it.