Narellan Town Centre Revitalization: a community-centric approach through placemaking

Redevelopment of Narellan Town Centre

There was an attempt at placemaking in Narellan in 2017 with the new extension of the local shopping mall, Narellan Town Centre, through the use of public art.

The extensions to the centre at 362 Camden Valley Way were valued at $200 million and nearly double the floor space from 36,000sqm to 72,000sqm. There would be space for over 100 new retailers and 1,500 new car parks. (Hydrocp 2025)

The centre owner stated on its website that:

New civic plazas and entertainment precincts including a fantastic indoor / outdoor restaurant and casual dining precinct where you will be able to sit down and relax with friends day and night.

Kylie Legge has defined a place as

A location, a personal relationship to an environment, or act as a re-presentation of the spirit of the land and our unspoken community with it. In its simplest terms place is a space that has a distinct character. At is most complex it embodies the essence of a location, its community, spiritual beliefs, stories, history and aspirations. The essence of place is its genius loci, its ‘place-ness’. (Legge 2015)

According to Legge, place should deliver ‘character, identity or meaning’. The concept of place should also have community participation and create economic revitalisation. (Legge 2015)

The centre owners and designers have created a space where local folk can have social encounters, exchange, and meet other people.

This type of space attempts to strengthen the local economy and inspire the community by having the look and feel of a village market square, and it is typical of an urban village marketplace. The space aims to be walkable and draw people into it through public art.

Placemaking planning at the centre has been community-driven and has allowed individuals to interpret the space in their own way.

The plaza is an attempt at placemaking where a space allows people to make their own story. People can create meaning for themselves by interacting with family and friends.

The plaza has attempted to develop its own cultural and social identity. This has been achieved by including a water feature, street furniture and public art.

One of the pieces of public art is a stylised Elderslie banksia, an endangered species, of the local area.

There are also extracts from the history of the Narellan story by local historian Ian Willis on two separate panels taken from the Dictionary of Sydney. (Willis 2008).

There are also dioramas of Pansy, the Camden train that ran through the site of the shopping centre extension, as well as cows and open pastures motifs.

All these are part of the character of the development of the Narellan story, with its rural past, iconic train and Narellan Railway Station.

Conclusion

The planners seem to have achieved their aims with early usage by local families. Mothers and children have been interacting, taking selfies for family memoirs.

The surrounding food outlets have been busy creating a buzzy feel to the site. Workmen who did the fit-out on the centre extensions sat in the sun, having their lunch.

Placemaking seems to have achieved its aims of creating a community space through the use of public art, the creation of a plaza with its water features and street furniture. The plaza has been popular and has achieved the aims of the designers.

References

Kylie Legge 2015, ‘The evolution of placemaking – what’s next?’, Newplanner, September, pp4-5.

Hydrocp (2025). BESPOKE STAINLESS STEEL GRATES AND FRAMES NARELLAN TOWN CENTRE PROJECT. [online] Available at: https://hydrocp.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Narellan-Town-Centre.pdf [Accessed 1 Aug. 2025].

Willis, I. (2008). Narellan. [online] State Library of NSW/Dictionary of Sydney (2021) Dictionaryofsydney.org. Available at: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/narellan [Accessed 1 Aug. 2025].

Updated on 1 August 2025. Originally posted on 24 October 2016, as ‘Placemaking at Narellan NSW’.