Urban Transit, Urban Edges: New transport systems and city identity in Cincinnati, USA, and the Gold Coast, Australia

The idea of urban edge conditions took on greater importance when the city lost its traditional boundary – the protective walled enclosure separating it from the countryside. In the contemporary city, edges can provide a means of orientation in the urban context beyond the binary relationship of inside/outside that previously dominated an understanding of the city. Edges are the privileged spaces of transformation, places of change and development where the future form of the city is negotiated. New urban transit systems can play a key role in making urban edges as places of transformation. Beyond yielding greater efficiency in transport networks and sustainable infrastructure outcomes, new urban transit systems provide opportunities for a transformed understanding of city identity. This paper discusses two cities undergoing change through the insertion of new transit systems and their greater urban effect as imagined through collaborative design workshops involving students, communities and other stakeholders – the Living Public: Urban and Architectural Design Workshop held in Australia’s Gold Coast, July, 2011 and the Metropolis and Mobility: Bus Rapid Transport and Bikeway Planning Workshop, held in Cincinnati, Ohio, April, 2013