Port Road Rejuvenation

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Woodville/West Torrens/Charles Sturt, SA

The rejuvenation of Port Road will be a unique and land mark project in an urban environment. The largest infrastructure project undertaken by the City of Charles Sturt, the redevelopment of Port Road requires an innovative design to achieve stormwater management, wetlands, aquifer storage and reuse strategies within a landscaped boulevard which is functional, attractive and ecologically sustainable. The Port Road corridor is one of the most significant in Adelaide and is the third busiest road corridor.

The design will create a more cohesive landscape experience with distinct themes, legible gateways, and nodes that celebrate the ‘art of procession and arrival.’ Central to this is a defining framework of tree and shrub planting – an ‘urban forest’, that is a biodiversity ‘thread’, eventually linking the proposed wetlands to the west with the parklands to the east. This vegetative thread will become the framework that presents the opportunity to link future land use opportunities beyond the immediate corridor, for example, the redevelopment of the Cheltenham Parade Racecourse and the upgrade of the South Road corridor.

This project, and the landscape and urban design in particular, will emphasise sustainable development and particularly utilise local indigenous vegetation, including original reedbed species, to form a biodiversity corridor. A key principle of the landscape form throughout the project is stormwater detention. A series of precincts has been designed to provide formal, semi-formal and informal urban streetscape areas with high visual impact.  Key amenity issues such as improving car parking safety, provision for viewing platforms, the protection and enhancement of cultural and heritage features, the inclusion of contemporary design coordinated street furniture (including bus-stop shelters), the provision of pedestrian scaled lighting and the inclusion of opportunities for civic markers, heritage markers and art initiatives have been incorporated into the design.

The highly effective and collaborative focus on water sensitive urban design will achieve the integration of flood protection, water run-off quality, provision for surge stormwater basins, harvesting and beneficial use of stormwater, extensive median wetlands and the use of indigenous wetland design within the median as key features. The project will provide an engaging and functional streetscape that is also an environmental and cultural asset for the community.

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