Queensland will be hosting the 2032 Olympic Games. A few people with experience of parks and planning in the past 30 years have been concerned at the absence of any strategic plan for enhancing the liveability of the South East Queensland region. The advent of the Games offers an opportunity to bequeath a first-class network of parks, reserves and open space as well as enhancing Queensland’s reputation as a liveable community. ‘Liveability’ includes ensuring that new residential, commercial and sporting development is steered towards locations not unduly constrained by topography, biodiversity, scenic amenity or other planning criteria.
The liveability of Queensland’s urban settlements has been compromised by four significant policy milestones:
- the destruction of the Regional Open Space System in 1995
- the introduction of performance-based planning via the Integrated Planning Act in 1997, thereby making it more or less impossible for local governments to prevent development in heavily constrained locations such as floodplains
- the destruction of the replacement Regional Landscape Strategy in 2012
- the demise of regional strategic planning in 2012, leaving development to proceed case-by-case, parcel by parcel, through negotiation between developers and councils, often with little reference to regional strategic considerations.
A new campaign called “SEQ Green Space Strategy 2032” was born in March 2026. This page accesses documentary materials relevant to the campaign.
For background materials, prior to March 2026, see Open space in SEQ 1994-2021; ROSS supplementary materials; and a chronology of 2004-2012 by the SEQ Community Alliance, as well as numerous other relevant documents in the twin PaRC collections.