Urban park civil design Adelaide CBD pocket park.

Project overview

ASTCAD provided civil engineering design for a new 2,400 m² urban pocket park in Adelaide CBD, replacing a derelict commercial lot. The brief required earthworks, paving, drainage, gravity retaining walls, a small water feature service connection and integration with adjacent footpath and tram corridor.

The challenge

The brownfield site had contaminated fill requiring controlled removal. Levels needed integration with three adjacent street kerbs and a tram-stop platform 1.2 m below natural surface. Stormwater discharge had to connect to the existing council main without exceeding the legal point-of-discharge flow.

Our approach

• Earthworks design with contamination management plan integration
• Retaining wall design to AS 4678 (gravity timber + steel-reinforced concrete)
• Paving and drainage design to integrate with existing kerb levels
• Stormwater discharge limited via attenuation tank
• Coordination with tram corridor and footpath authority

Deliverables

• Civil drawings — earthworks, paving, drainage, retaining walls
• Retaining wall structural certification
• Stormwater discharge approval documentation
• Authority coordination correspondence and approvals
• Construction specifications and inspection-and-test plan

Outcome

Construction was completed in 5 months. The park opened to public access in spring 2023. Council monitoring during the first wet season showed the attenuation tank performing to design with no discharge overflow events.

How we approach urban park civil design

Urban park civil design has to serve two masters: the landscape architect’s vision and the drainage reality of the site. Our role is making both work. We develop grading plans that preserve the design intent while achieving positive drainage, accessible path gradients to AS 1428, and levels that tie into surrounding streets without ugly retaining. Stormwater is treated as an amenity where possible — swales, raingardens and passive irrigation are designed with real hydraulic capacity, not just as landscape features. Services coordination covers irrigation mains, lighting conduits and future utility corridors so the park is not dug up in its second year.

Civil deliverables for public open space

Typical documentation includes site grading and levels plans, drainage layout with water-sensitive urban design elements, path and pavement details, edge and retaining details, and set-out plans for construction. We coordinate with landscape, electrical and irrigation designers, and produce council-ready documentation aligned with the open space authority’s standard details, keeping approval and handover smooth for the developer and contractor alike.

Balancing amenity and engineering

Public open space succeeds when the engineering disappears. Our urban park civil design approach keeps drainage infrastructure subordinate to the landscape — pits located out of desire lines, surface levels that shed water without visible falls, and water-sensitive design elements that read as garden rather than infrastructure. Accessibility drives the level design throughout: continuous accessible paths of travel to AS 1428 constrain gradients more tightly than drainage does, so we resolve both surfaces together rather than sequentially. The result is a park where the community sees lawn, paths and trees, and the engineering quietly does its work underneath.

From pocket parks to district-level open space, we provide the civil engineering layer beneath the landscape design — grading, drainage, pavements and services coordination — as a package that integrates cleanly with your landscape architect’s documentation. Councils receive a coordinated set rather than two designs stapled together, which shortens approval cycles measurably.