Rosanna Nobile’s love of design and planning can be traced back to a childhood spent exploring open homes, walking their hallways, searching for inspiration in colour palettes, textures, curves and angles.
In particular over the years with frequent visits to Sydney the unique look and feel of newly designed terraced houses developed a larger interest in character.
“I always loved design, so I was initially heading towards an architecture route,” Rosanna said. “But after attending a UniSC Open Day, I changed my mind.”
I realised that town planning was, in a way, similar to what architects do but at a much larger scale – I fell in love with it from that point on.
It was a conversation with Urban Design and Town Planning lecturer Dr Nick Stevens that convinced Rosanna to refocus her career path.
“I always naively thought planning was just about putting a building somewhere,” Rosanna said.
“But obviously it’s much more complex than that – you need to consider environmental, economic, transport and social implications – there’s a lot of thinking and problem solving that goes into it.
Dr Stevens said the degree focussed on giving graduates the skills to plan, design and shape communities for people to live, work, learn and play.
“This is a growth profession,” Dr Stevens said. “According to the latest Planning Institute of Australia report, there’s been an 82 per cent increase in people working in the industry over the last 20 years, with most of that increase coming from young females aged 25-44-years-old.”
“It is a great time to get into an industry where you can make a difference and inject new ideas, experiences and skills learnt in the classroom.”
A few years after that conversation with Dr Stevens, Rosanna has found herself doing what she’d dreamed – helping design communities through her job as a planning officer in the Queensland Government’s Department of Housing, Local Government, Planning and Public Works.
“I managed to get my end of year placement with the Planning and Development Services team on the Sunshine Coast,” Rosanna said. “It was really the culmination of placements and hands-on learning opportunities that I think helped my personal and professional development.
“Throughout the degree in our studio classes we also got a lot of opportunities to work on real-life projects with council so I managed to get a lot of experience helping design different areas on the Coast.
Whilst working on council projects for studio classes, Rosanna said she developed a growing interest in environmental aspects of town planning – specifically urban climate which later became her chosen thesis topic.
“Urban heat islands are areas where there’s not enough landscaping or trees in a built environment to help mitigate heat that radiates off surfaces likes roads, roofs and buildings, which leads to causes such as social and health impacts on people who live, work or socialise in those areas,” Rosanna said.
“After completing my honors thesis on the communication of urban climate and having the opportunity to present at the 2023 PIA State Conference I really became interested in the recent upcoming changes in new planning schemes to implement and acknowledge urban climate impacts and methods of mitigation.”
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