Adelaide is blessed with parklands that separate the inner city from the suburbs. Unlike Perth, Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane Adelaide’s urban geography has no river or harbour to define it. The city's geography centres on its unique and iconic encircling parks and gardens. Some of the gardens--eg Veale or the Japanese are badly designed and quite ugly.
However, these public spaces are in a poor state. They are treated in utilitiarian terms as a resource--eg The Formula I Grand Prix, other motor events etc with inappropriate developments, such as the Wine Centre, imposed on them by state governments little money given back to the parklands. The penny pinching means that the parklands are battered and left.
Some exotics have been pulled out and in the more deserted parts there has been extensive and continuing plantings of native trees, with rows of them enclosing and separating the various individual parks and sport grounds.
What all of this indicates is the low quality of the landscape architecture culture in Adelaide. But that is to be expected when the City of Adelaide has been locked in self-induced inertia, marked by a lack of genuine leadership and effective management. As Chris Bowe observes:
"...the City of Adelaide behaves like a town council that happens to be bordered by parklands, the CBD just another set of streets to be cleaned. It is fixated on trivial issues such as the colour of pavers in Rundle Mall, while missing the bigger issue of redeveloping the mall as a generator of activity. The mall is an example of the pursuit of sectoral interests at the expense of the bigger picture: the current push to increase retail activity is focused on helping the retailers and landowners but fails to consider its development and management as a magnetic public space for the wider community."