In 1967 a symposium was organised in Adelaide to address the poor quality of urban development that had become prevalent in Australia in the 1960s. Robin Boyd’s recent writings had summarised some of the issues and the South Australian community decided to take action to determine how to improve our urban environment. A keynote speaker from Sydney was invited to give the keynote address.
The aim was to determine a strategy and the outcome was the establishment in South Australia in 1969 of an Australian Civic Trust based on the UK model with a focus on quality in urban development driven by public demand.
Originally named the Civic Trust of South Australia Inc., the Trust is a proudly independent and voluntary association based in Adelaide. It seeks community views on civic issues and coordinates responses by community representatives, leaders and experts to encourage higher civic standards for the community’s benefit.
The Trust has always placed priority on the civic impact of design and given awards to good developments and brickbats to poor ones. Primary importance has been given to social and environmental issues in urban design and in 2004 it formally recognised the increasing public attention to these issues by the introduction of social and ecological categories in addition to those for the built environment.
As a result the awards and brickbats program is now specifically designed to cover the general civic spectrum and in 2007 the scope was extended to identifying civic needs on a long-term basis in the form of an evolving public vision.
