Sport is part of the cultural identity of many Australians.

In Australia, sports and recreational organisations attract more volunteers than any other type of organisation.

Major sporting events – grand finals, international cricket, grand slam tournaments, surfing competitions and cycling challenges – as well as less watched events – weekend matches, morning and afternoon training sessions and amateur competitions – fill calendars and recreational time.

Sport isn’t just a favoured pastime for Australians. It is a significant contributor to the Australian economy.

The 2032 Olympics will catapult south-east Queensland onto the world stage, but there’s a long way to go before the region will be ready to meet the demands of hosting the Games.

The 2032 Olympic master plan includes three main hubs in the state’s south-east corner, which will host 28 sports split across them.
There will be 21 venues in Brisbane, seven on the Gold Coast and four on the Sunshine Coast. Football preliminary matches will also be played in Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba, Sydney and Melbourne.

To date, the emphasis has been on investing in facilities that already exist to make them more accessible to their immediate precincts (through pedestrian mobility/walkability) and to the region as a whole (via high-speed rail and light rail).

Implicit in this is the recognition that while Queensland can provide individual facilities and locales of value, it struggles to create well-connected, accessible precincts that successfully combine multiple activities and multiple mobilities.

Major facilities such as the Brisbane Cricket Ground (Gabba), Suncorp Stadium, Victoria Park and Raymond Park – all of which will be important venues in 2032 – remain uncomfortable for pedestrians to access, despite being so near to the CBD and South Bank.

The urban challenge for South East Queensland now is to go beyond a “city of bits” to manifest liveable subtropical urbanity, integrated from the pedestrian to the regional scale and memorable for its journeys.

Former Olympic cities demonstrate that to achieve change at this scale, not only do new forms of urbanity need to be imagined from the start, but new ways of working are necessary to bring them into being. It is this expanded capacity to deliver, by urban professionals and authorities, that enables the creation of great new places, and in turn fosters a new and shared sense of urban appreciation.

The world of sports won’t escape this trend and actually is already integrating robotics. Whether you are a trainer, a player, a club, fan, viewer, stadium owner or groundsman, you too will be affected by present and future robots (most of them equipped with AI).

Most robots in sports currently assist or help humans practice rather than replace them. The robots performing actual sporting activities are for now showcased examples, proof of concepts, part of researches