The Cairns City Centre Master Plan is intended to envisage and promote Cairns as an outstanding and internationally recognised exemplar of Tropical Urbanism.

The main intention of the master plan proposal is to envisage the Cairns City Centre as an outstanding and internationally recognised exemplar of Tropical Urbanism; a place in which the streets, squares and buildings create a verdant, shaded, lush and open environment with a urban character unique to the city.

The master plan focuses on the potential inherent in the greening of Cairns’ grid pattern of broad streets to create new and generous public spaces of high urban quality.

The simple and strong strategy to envisage a landscaped and shaded city centre will be transformational in its effect on the city.

The master plan develops a deeper response to the client’s vision to make Cairns the best regional centre in Australia by highlighting the city’s unique characteristics – its Indigenous, European and multicultural heritage, its creativity, and its close association with Micronesia and South East Asia – all within a tropical context of great natural beauty.

By seeking to reinforce the region’s rich tropical character the master plan establishes a broad but achievable long term strategy that successfully builds on the existing character and potential of the place, integrating the natural and the urban.

Project Sheet

• Project Sheet