Our most popular video of 2025 showed how hot the surface level of King George Square got during a heatwave, and how the Square was not always designed this way.
It’s quite clear that the state of King George Square is a bugbear for many locals, workers and even tourists who cross the square, especially those who know how it used to be.
Igniting a flurry of comments and attracting over twenty-thousand views across Facebook and Instagram, many new and young locals could not understand why BCC had ripped up lawns, trees and fountains out of King George Square.
So how did it get this way? Let’s look at the history.
Before he was the one-term LNP Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman was the LNP Lord Mayor of Brisbane, elected in 2004.
The development of the underground busway pushed Council to reconsider keeping the fountains and lawn over the long-term, outsourcing design ideas via a national competition.
UbrisJHD won that contest. The firm claimed that under their plan, the square would “become the city’s premier civic destination, integrating a major transport interchange with a world class public space”.
But after 16 months and $28 million spent, public reaction was mixed. Many praised the ‘big back deck’ but were let down by concrete and stone now dominating the Square. Launched during a notably hot October, heat reflection couldn’t be ignored.
Locals were on the record slamming it as “disgusting” with tourists being a bit more diplomatic, calling it “hot and glary”.
Lord Mayor Newman could not help but concede things “could have been done better.” Council then spent an additional half a million dollars planting fiddle leaf trees around the periphery of the square.
It was not enough to quell the discontent.
The operator of the new café under the deck said that while customers were not complaining to her directly about the heat, they were quick to huddle under what shade they could find, prompting the owner to purchase two-metre by two-metre shades herself.
It was a similar story over at the Ann Street bus stop, where commuters expressed disappointment by the removal of shade.
It wasn’t just locals that voiced their displeasure. Many architects – including a former BCC chief architect, lined up to pan the redevelopment.
“A square should be a square, not a disparate group of huge buildings,” James Birrell said. “It was wonderful when there were fountains and people could meet there and sit on the grass but there’s no space for gathering there now.”
Former Queensland government architect Philip Follent argued that King George Square needed time to “settle” before it could be judged on its success as a meeting place and would be bolstered by the redevelopment of the Brisbane City Hall.
However, as the years went by, the criticisms have continued to stick, with the Square’s redevelopment re-emerging as an election issue in local council elections since 2016.
The Labor Council Opposition have consistently included a new redevelopment in their policy suite across the last four Council election campaigns, arguing it’s an essential piece of the long-mooted ‘green spine’ connecting the Botanic Gardens to the Roma Street Parklands. The incumbent LNP administration have continued to defend the handiwork initiated by Newman.
About a month after BrisbaneNow posted our video, online industry website Brisbane Development released mock-ups of what King George Square could look like. While conceding some features may not be practically achievable given the underground busway, the concept designs provide inspiration of what King George Square could be with the political will and budget.
“So, the question is not whether we can fix King George Square. It is whether we will ever choose to.”
“Because really, at some point Brisbane has to stop saying “yeah… that’ll do” and start asking, “why can’t we have world class civic spaces in this city?”
What would you like to see in a refurbished King George Square? Let us know in the comments.
