This paper outlines research regarding the planning and design of a bold new continental-scale Green Infrastructure (GI) for Australia, the ‘National Green Network’ (NGN). The NGN is a design project that aims to augment Australia's current limited protected area network and meet international and national policy targets. Such a system would improve the long-term resilience of the Australian landscape and its biota through a proposed trans-continental network of vegetated corridors spanning the Australian continent. This would provide mobility for species within a framework of additional habitat and the ability to counteract ecological fragmentation and climate change. To create the NGN, an iterative design-based methodology was employed over three scales that document the shift from conceptual to specific, from policy to practice. At the local scale, detailed design resolution in conjunction with stakeholders through a charrette fine-tuned and adjusted the NGN, reinterpreting its potential to enable multi-functional outcomes. While conceived primarily for protection of biodiversity, a GI approach enabled consideration of both potential ecological and cultural benefits of such a scheme through holistic landscape planning. This leveraged the original ecological aims and augmented the NGN's feasibility.

While speculative maps and city plans have been the primary lingua franca for centuries to investigate and design the way urban centres and regions grow, this paper focuses instead on the role of large physical models of urban areas as a method for exploring and envisioning future urban strategies. The paper briefly traces their historical development from military and defence maquettes in sixteenth century Europe, through architectural models of the twentieth century, to the present day. Four contemporary examples of city mega-models in rapidly urbanising Asian cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi and Singapore – are then examined. These serve to illustrate the continuing role that physical models play as literal and figurative visioning tools for city makers, be they engineers, planners, landscape architects or architects. The paper posits that such models will remain an indispensable technique – tangible and tenacious in the city-making toolkit – despite an increasingly digital and virtual era.

Australia’s accredited landscape architecture programs shifted from few faculty members holding a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) to where holding this qualification is now essential. For conferral, the Australian Qualifications Framework mandates the PhD qualification demonstrate ‘a significant and original contribution to knowledge’. Examining snapshot periods of 2009 and 2019, we identify, evaluate and discuss the number and distribution of academics obtaining this qualification in accredited Australian landscape architecture university programs. We suggest there are five primary PhD modes of research, by: Dissertation, Publication, Dissertation with Embedded Design Experiment/Creative Inquiry, Creative Practice, and Reflection. Findings demonstrate a 268% growth in employed academics holding a PhD qualification, a dominant yet declining trend for the mode PhD by Dissertation and increasing conferral of modes containing design research components. Our work concludes by discussing the five PhD modes to contribute to the profession's pedagogical approaches.

Urban railway corridors—including abandoned, redesigned, and in-use lines—can support biodiversity and ecological connectivity in fragmented cities, yet their ecological dynamics and roles in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) remain poorly understood. Addressing this requires a context-sensitive approach that differentiates corridor types and compares their ecological functions. This study compares vegetation dynamics along railway corridors in two cities with contrasting socio-ecological contexts—Perth (Western Australia) and Beijing (China)—using a typology-based comparative approach. The results show that: (1) vegetation dynamics differ fundamentally between the two cities, with Perth characterized by vertically structured vegetation dominated by native tree layers and non-native disturbance-tolerant annual groundcover, while Beijing supports more continuous vegetation with widespread natural regeneration of native species; and (2) these differences correspond to distinct suggested NbS strategies. For Perth, NbS should combine phenology-aware management (wet versus dry seasons) with disturbance-based zoning and staged native planting strategies. In contrast, Beijing corridors are characterized by more uniform disturbance patterns but differentiated corridor typologies, indicating NbS structured around corridor-type management with a stronger emphasis on the support of native groundcover establishment and allowing for self-sustaining regeneration. These findings highlight how different contexts shape vegetation dynamics and provide comparative ecological insights for developing context-specific NbS for urban railway corridors.