Urban design has a dark side to its creativity – two projects in Brisbane show how

Aggressive forms of “hostile architecture” can be highly problematic. Urban designers need to broaden their understanding of creativity if they are to design liveable, sustainable and equitable places to live and work.

Creativity in the design of the built environment is too often considered only in terms of novelty, beauty, and function. Yet, creativity does not always lead to producing desirable outcomes and is sometimes deployed for malevolent or harmful ends. Less often considered is “creative use of prudence” during the design process — creativity in exercising sound judgement and understanding social values and design consequences. We suggest that creative design prudence — that is, creative use of foresight — needs to become entrenched within the profession.

The Howard Smith Wharves

Two major commercial developments in Brisbane are cases in point. The vision of the Howard Smith Wharves (HSW), according to its developers, was “to create a vibrant playground for lovers of the good life.” The $78 million redevelopment of the 1930s heritage-listed riverside wharf included restaurants, bars and an active transport corridor for pedestrians and cyclists to travel along the river. Indeed, approval documents required path separation through line markings.

However, one month before the opening in 2018, this requirement was overturned and instead, aggressive forms of hostile architecture were implemented, including gravel on the path. The decision, described by HSW as a creative way to design a “go slow” zone, sparked community backlash.

Not only had the development disrupted a key city thoroughfare, but the gravel and lack of lane markings reduced accessibility and introduced new safety hazards. Yet, the development was praised for its design.

As community groups launched petitions in protest, the Planning Institute of Australia awarded the HSW with its 2020 Hard Won Victory urban design award, citing ongoing community engagement that had “delivered a project that reflects the community and the location”.

Brisbane’s new parallel runway

Airports often lead major infrastructure developments that pose unique challenges due to safety, land use planning, and environmental legislation. Creativity is key to obtaining approvals. The New Parallel Runway, costing $1.1 b, doubles Brisbane Airport’s capacity to 110 flights an hour, surpassing Melbourne and Sydney as no curfew or flight caps are imposed.

The project won a number of awards, including Airport Excellence Award 2021 (Australian Airports Association) and Project of the Year 2021 (Infrastructure Partnerships Australia).

Yet, there is a more sinister side, which is currently the focus of a 2024 Senate Inquiry. Approved in 2007, the new airspace design now causes significant noise pollution and health harms for communities in over 220 suburbs.

Despite promises of minimal noise impact, communities were misled. The Aircraft Noise Ombudsman’s 2021 investigation revealed inadequate community engagement and environmental assessment by Airservices, suggesting a pattern of deceit and raising concerns about the project’s integrity. The government has allocated more than $10 m to fix the flight path design debacle.

Was the decision to minimise community protections and maximise profits for the airport and airlines an accident? Or was it a purposeful act of malevolent creativity to push through ministerial approvals without risking any proper community opposition that could have jeopardised the project from going ahead?

Such examples are not uncommon but they highlight a tension in design about whether we should be celebrating design creativity when it is divorced from design prudence.

To design is to create, to imagine new possibilities and to bring them into existence. Whether aided by a creative leap or intentional process, creativity is intrinsic to designing and essential to the work of defining issues and generating responses that are novel, valuable and useful. Creativity is celebrated and heralded as a primary skill set that planners and designers of the built environment must aspire towards.

But creativity also has a dark side—it can be ambiguous, malevolent or even harmful. So, while the HWS development created a “world-class waterfront open space,” design decisions also introduced the increased risk of collisions between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles, as well as reduced accessibility. Such consequences might at best reveal naivety, at worst, an intention to subvert council requirements and regulations.

Design recognition often comes from creating work that demonstrates originality in form, function and materials.

Sound judgement is less explicitly celebrated, yet it is clear that design judgements, no matter how original, do not always improve conditions and can sometimes make matters worse. Conceptual, material and technical decisions, once they encounter systems of power or broader social and environmental issues, can have unintended consequences.

Designers need a broader grasp of creativity that encompasses sound judgement and  critical understanding of design’s entanglements with economic, societal and environmental factors—what we are referring to as design prudence as a way to mitigate the dark side of creativity.

One way to do this is through stronger engagement with history to critically assess and reflect on the chequered role that creativity had played in bringing about projects in the built environment. Another way is to more explicitly train designers in intermediary skills and strategic design practices so as to be able to make decisions based on ethics, prudential thinking and sound judgement.

This article is based on a newly published book chapter: Foth, M, Doherty, S, & Kelly, N. (2024). The dark side of creativity: A design perspective on the built environment’s chequered histories. In J. Miao & T. Yigitcanlar (Eds.), Routledge Companion of Creativity and the Built Environment (pp. 314–326). Routledge. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/237912/