The Town of Port Hedland’s Public Open Space and Street Tree Strategy
The Town of Port Hedland Public Open Space and Street Tree Strategy 2025–2035 responds to one of Australia’s most challenging landscape contexts. Shaped by extreme heat, cyclones, water scarcity, a transient workforce and a globally significant resource industry, the Strategy establishes a long-term vision for Hedland as a place people want to live, where nature is prioritised and public open spaces enrich everyday life. Landscape is reframed not as an amenity, but as essential social, environmental and economic infrastructure.
The project began with a simple question: How do you maximise the benefits of greening in one of Australia’s hottest regional towns when resources are limited?
At the heart of the Strategy is Hedland’s Green Network, a landscape-led Hub and Spoke model designed to maximise the benefits of greening. Major destination parks become hubs, connected by prioritised streets, neighbourhood parks, waterways and recreation corridors. Together they create an integrated landscape system that strengthens ecological connections, improves access to quality public space and delivers shade where it is needed most.
The Strategy balances community aspirations, best-practice landscape planning and the Town’s operational capacity to create a practical pathway for long-term delivery. Spatial analysis of tree canopy, socio-economic disadvantage, social infrastructure and movement networks directs greening towards neighbourhoods where it can deliver the greatest benefit and build resilience to extreme heat.
Rather than simply creating more parks, the Strategy connects streets, drainage corridors, foreshores, recreation spaces and neighbourhood parks as one landscape network delivering shade, biodiversity, active transport, recreation and climate resilience. It responds directly to Pilbara conditions, including limited water, extreme temperatures, cyclones, poor soils and infrastructure constraints.
A suite of implementation tools translates this vision into action, including priority greening corridors, a Street Tree Implementation Plan, public open space prioritisation and species selection guidance.
Collaboration with the Town of Port Hedland, Yurra, Grafted Studio, Traditional Custodians, government, industry and community grounded the Strategy in the realities of the Pilbara. Engagement with Indigenous Elders and the Kariyarra community embedded cultural knowledge and aspirations, while broader community engagement identified shade, greener streets, safer parks and stronger walking and cycling connections as priorities.
The Strategy also demonstrates how greening can support greater equity, with fourteen of twenty priority streets located in South Hedland. More than a ten-year plan, Hedland’s Green Network demonstrates how landscape can function as essential infrastructure, creating healthier, more resilient and connected regional communities.
Country
Kariyarra
Client
Town of Port Hedland
Location
Port Hedland, WA
Year
2025