Queenslanders view recreation experiences as one of the most important aspects of their lives, and highly value the recreation opportunities available in their local community, region and State. Recreation is essential to building and sustaining healthy communities and contributes to Queensland’s cultural richness, diversity and quality lifestyles. Visitors to Queensland often base their holidays on recreation activities such as fishing, camping, surfing, scuba diving, four wheel driving, bushwalking and boating.
Get involved
There is more attention being paid to how our communities are planned and designed to enable people to access places for recreation. This includes the development of walkways and cyclepaths. In rural areas, it may also include horse trails. These linkages encourage people to move about in the community which fosters a sense of social connectedness and gives a sense of community - all while people get out and about and exercise!
By being involved in planning processes, you can make suggestions for changes to improve access to parks and other open spaces, shopping centres, schools, places of employment, transport and community centres.
The community can also participate in both the recreation planning and the planning scheme processes. Notices usually appear in the newspaper or newsletters may be used to invite participation.
Planning notes
Open space for Sport and Recreation
The Queensland Government recognises the importance of proper planning for sport and recreation facilities and activities to contribute to building and sustaining healthy, active communities.
Open Space for Sport and Recreation - Planning Principles and Implementation Notes for Local Government has been developed for local governments to provide specific guidance on how to consider sport and recreation in the land use planning context.
Local governments can use this publication to assist in the planning scheme and corporate planning process, and to guide the development of associated planning instruments and plans.
Issues covered in the publication include providing a diverse range of sport and recreation settings, recreation and sport in rural areas, non-motorised recreation trail networks and open space standards/ park planning performance criteria. Implementation measures for each issue are suggested with examples provided.
The publication also includes a range of case studies on topics such as multiple uses of open space, waterways and riparian corridors, cross boundary strategic planning, facility location/co-location of facilities and redevelopment of land.
The publication is available to download in pdf format and incorporates the following parts:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License