Picton with its population of only 4000 is remote from city pressures. But it needed a waterfront that provided a focus and heart for the town – a place that would also help it host the hundreds of thousands of ferry passengers that pass through the town every year. Changing uses of waterfront land presented the opportunity to look to the town’s historic and present social patterns – exploring how the community has adapted, changed and used its public space over time. These social patterns have informed the reclamation of a historically significant area of public realm, that over the history of the Sounds and Picton Waterfront has served visitors and inhabitants as a meeting place.