Bradfield City Centre is Australia's first new city in 100 years and a major development at the heart of the Western Sydney Aerotropolis.
Digital Garden partnered with the Bradfield Development Authority to design and develop a new digital platform that could establish the city's online presence while providing a flexible foundation capable of evolving alongside the city itself.
Built on Drupal, the platform combines a highly visual public experience with structured content and a flexible component system, enabling the Bradfield team to manage and expand the website as the development progresses.
View the bradfield case study here >
About the project
The goal was to create the primary digital gateway for Bradfield City Centre: a high-impact, accessible and future-ready platform capable of communicating the vision for Australia's newest city.
The website needed to serve several very different audiences, including investors, industry, government, First Nations communities and the broader community. It needed to communicate a complex, long-term city-building vision while establishing credibility, attracting interest and making information easy to understand.
Digital Garden began with a discovery-led strategy and user experience process, working with stakeholders to define audience needs, content priorities and the site's information architecture. Clear pathways were developed for different audiences while creating a structure capable of accommodating content that would expand and change as the city develops.
A flexible, component-based Drupal implementation was developed to support this evolving content model. Reusable components give content editors the ability to build varied, visually rich pages while maintaining the integrity of the design system and overall user experience.
The visual experience brings the Bradfield identity to life through strong graphics, video, masked shapes and fluid interactions. Drupal provides the underlying content structure needed to deliver these experiences consistently across the site.
A significant feature is an interactive map that places Bradfield within its wider geographic and economic context. It helps users understand the city's location, surrounding infrastructure and industries, and planned precincts, transforming complex planning and place information into an intuitive digital experience.
Accessibility was considered throughout UX, design and development to ensure the experience could remain engaging and visually distinctive while meeting the requirements expected of a government digital platform.
The result is a scalable digital platform that acts as the front door to Bradfield City Centre. It provides the Bradfield Development Authority with a flexible publishing environment today and a foundation that can continue to grow as the city, its audiences and its digital requirements evolve.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal was selected for its flexibility, security and ability to support a government digital platform that will continue to evolve over many years.
The project required a CMS that could support strong content governance while giving the Bradfield team the flexibility to create engaging, content-rich pages without relying on developers for routine publishing.
Drupal's structured content model and component-based approach allowed us to establish a consistent design system while giving editors flexibility in how pages are assembled. Its mature permissions, workflow and content management capabilities also made it well suited to a government environment.
Importantly, Drupal provides an extensible foundation that can continue to evolve as Bradfield City Centre moves through different stages of development and its audiences, content and digital requirements expand.
Technical Specifications
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