I'm up here on the Gold Coast in south-east Queensland from Tuesday to Friday to attend the latest State of Australia's Cities (SOAC) conference. It's all about urban management / planning and I'm chairing a session today and also presenting my paper, which has been accepeted for publication.
We started with a reception on Tuesday evening atop Australia's tallest residential building - and perhaps the highest in the southern hemisphere. This blog post presents the views we had from the top - and 77 th - floor of the very recent and elegant building shown here:
This picture was actually taken the following morning when I went out for a long walk starting at about 5.30 am. It's nice and cool then! The rest of the pictures were taken at sunset the previous evening and may seem a little dark. Surfers Paradise, the name of the district where the conference was held is probably Australia's premier seaside resort, with lovely sandy beaches, waterways, and so on - with a backdrop of green hills. And, as the pictures will show it's a bit like Miami Beach in Florida, replete with lots of white towers that serve as hotels or private residential accommodation. Would you believe that 70 years ago, at the end of the second world war, the only thing you'd see in most of the views presented would have been a few beach shacks, probably made of wood and corrugated iron! Now there's a city of 500,000 + inhabitants with a great life-style and burgeoning high-tech economy.
This shows the Nerang River which flows into a broad estuary full of expensive boats and tourist attractions like Seaworld.
Looking South the City of the Gold Coast stretches in the thin ribbon towards the NSW border, with the border ranges rising right background.
Many of the residents live on high-priced properties dotted around canal estates etched from the Nerang river's flood plain. There you can have two garages, one for the cars and the other for your boat. I hope that the forecast 2 m rise in sea-level won't happen any time soon. It could rpove rather expensive for the residents!
I'd better head back to preparing my presentation for today
AS
We started with a reception on Tuesday evening atop Australia's tallest residential building - and perhaps the highest in the southern hemisphere. This blog post presents the views we had from the top - and 77 th - floor of the very recent and elegant building shown here:
This picture was actually taken the following morning when I went out for a long walk starting at about 5.30 am. It's nice and cool then! The rest of the pictures were taken at sunset the previous evening and may seem a little dark. Surfers Paradise, the name of the district where the conference was held is probably Australia's premier seaside resort, with lovely sandy beaches, waterways, and so on - with a backdrop of green hills. And, as the pictures will show it's a bit like Miami Beach in Florida, replete with lots of white towers that serve as hotels or private residential accommodation. Would you believe that 70 years ago, at the end of the second world war, the only thing you'd see in most of the views presented would have been a few beach shacks, probably made of wood and corrugated iron! Now there's a city of 500,000 + inhabitants with a great life-style and burgeoning high-tech economy.
This shows the Nerang River which flows into a broad estuary full of expensive boats and tourist attractions like Seaworld.
Looking South the City of the Gold Coast stretches in the thin ribbon towards the NSW border, with the border ranges rising right background.
Many of the residents live on high-priced properties dotted around canal estates etched from the Nerang river's flood plain. There you can have two garages, one for the cars and the other for your boat. I hope that the forecast 2 m rise in sea-level won't happen any time soon. It could rpove rather expensive for the residents!
I'd better head back to preparing my presentation for today
AS
1 comment:
Just think how much money you would have made if you had bought land here in the days when there were only a few isolated beach shacks! Richard.
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