Vegetation succession planning and resilience: digital visualization and modelling of the Adelaide Park Lands, Australia

Discourses about urban heat island effects has pointed to two positive conclusions that firstly inserting greenery into the city fabric will ameliorate the impacts and that secondly the existing fabric already is serving in some capacity in ameliorating the effects. Both are conclusions positioned in static temporality and do not respect the dynamic nature of landscapes and in particular tree species. In these discourses little attention has been given to nurturing existing vegetative resources, sustaining these resources and how best to holistically address temporal change or the senescence of these resources. This paper considers and case study’s the internationally iconic town planning template of the ‘City of Adelaide Plan’, elevated to prominence by Ebenezer Howard in his garden city arguments, but focuses upon the Park Land ring that has historically characterised Adelaide as being unique and of international cultural significance.