Bond Vice-Chancellor Professor Tim Brailsford says the Gold Coast should take a leaf out of New York City’s Central Park

THE Gold Coast should take a leaf out of New York City’s Central Park, creating a shared focal point for a better lifestyle and improved collaboration, says Bond Vice Chancellor Professor Tim Brailsford.

PROFESSOR Tim Brailsford has held senior academic positions, including executive dean at the University of Queensland and dean at the Australian National University in Canberra.

He holds a PhD, masters and honours degrees and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Intitute of Australasia, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and Fellow of CPA Australia.

He was awarded the Prime Minister’s Centenary Medal in 2003.

But the father of three didn’t necessarily plan his path in education.

“I fell into education, it wasn’t a very deliberate career strategy,” he said.

“I guess I saw the transformational power of education and saw it as a very honourable and rewarding sector to work in.”

What do you love about the Gold Coast?

The diversity of living on the Coast is its greatest appeal for Prof Brailsford, who said the city had its own special character.

“There aren’t many places in the world that you can work 10-15 minutes from the world’s best beaches,” he said.

“It has its own sense of identity, it’s carved out its place in the sun, but it is also continually looking forward.”

What do you think could be done to better the Gold Coast?

The flip side of this diversity, however, is our greatest weakness, Prof Brailsford said, with diversity of geography and interests leading to a lack of cohesion in governance.

“If we were to take transport for instance, why does the train stop at Varsity Lakes? Why are we going to have a tram that essentially stops in the middle of nowhere? We’re developing all this public transport, but there’s no public transport to the airport. Why did we build a sports stadium where there’s only local traffic access to it?

“Questions like that all have roots in that rich tapestry between the relations that exist between the state level and the local council.”

In your travels, what have you seen being done elsewhere that you think could work here?

Food and cultural festivals in Spain and Germany, along with the sights and smells of outdoor eating in Asia all have attractive ideas for the Gold Coast, Prof Brailsford said.

“There are some places I’ve been to where there’s a regular weekend or weekly event which is anywhere from food festivals to outdoor movie festivals. We do some festivals here, but they tend to be either very large scale, or they tend to be very localised and there’s nothing in between.

“There’s nothing really that gives you a consistent feeling across the Gold Coast in terms of that outdoor, community festival.”

Getting more out of our most famous attractions — the beaches — and allowing trade on the sand is also a no-brainer.

“We use it basically for lying on the sand or going for a swim, right?

“Why don’t we use our greatest asset outside the very traditional notion of daylight hours? Imagine if, every Friday and Saturday night, you could go up and down the beach and there’s people cooking barbecues and there’s international food flavours and you’ve got international bands which are jamming. You could have people wandering, having an evening stroll and going to listen to some music and grab something to eat. Our greatest asset is probably our most under-utilised asset.”

If time, money, laws and approvals were no issue, what is one big idea you’d undertake today?

The currently competing interests of north and south, and the lack of connection between east and west, could be addressed by creating a central city feature, shared and loved by all Gold Coasters and becoming an attraction to visitors in its own right.

If Prof Brailsford had a magic wand, we’d have Central Park, Gold Coast style. It would take the focus of the heavily-trafficked north-south strip and create a geographical city centre that could host concerts, sporting and community events, a tramline, picnic and exercise space — even a zoo.

“There’s not a lot of connectivity, so the people down at Coolangatta, for instance, would never come up to Surfers. The people out at Mudgeeraba rarely venture out from a small radius. If you go to Southport, people there refuse to believe that anyone lives anywhere else. There are a lot of very distinct cultures and it actually ends up being quite dysfunctional.

“Our politics become very localised — for not a particularly large electorate, Fifteen councillors and they’re all representing their patch and fighting for their patch.

“Most other cities are built in a more centric concept — you have a CBD in the middle and everything comes out in concentric circles around that.

“The concept of a circle for a city means that you don’t have these strong extremes because everyone comes through the city.

“How do you overcome that? Imagine if we had something in the middle which connected north-south and east-west. If you look at a city that has very similar challenges, Manhattan, New York, comes to mind. Central Park does it for New York — it connects the north and south of Manhattan and the east and west of Manhattan — so why don’t we look at building our own Central Park?

But where Prof Brailsford?

“You could probably do it in that space at the back of Robina stadium there, which joins up to Carrara, and you’re also connecting the M1 down to Broadbeach.

“You’ve got two stadiums at each end — the oval stadium in the north and the rectangular stadium to the south.

It becomes a bit of a combination between Central Park in New York, the Domain in Sydney, and the Yarra Park sporting precinct in Melbourne.”

What are the conversations Gold Coast movers and shakers should be having?

The people in charge of the city should get their noses out of the here and now, and focus more on the here and later, Prof Brailsford said.

“At the moment, we are quite focused on some near-term matters and those near-term matters are quite consuming in terms of energy and emotion. There’s too much conversation about the Commonwealth Games and the bikies issue at the moment, there’s too much conversation about local politics, and it’s a distraction from long-term planning, long-term infrastructure, long-term development plans.

“The Gold Coast has had a history of making too many ad-hoc, short-term decisions and we’ve got to get ourselves out of that mindset.”