Creating Canberra: A Century of Planning Cultures

Construction of Australia’s national capital, Canberra, began in 1913. From the original designs by Chicagoan architect Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin to the present day, the city reflects a hundred years of changing planning cultures and ideals. The authors not only trace the development of the planned capital city, but show how Canberra provides evidence of the evolution of planning generally. They describe how the city’s development path moved from early modernism to welfare state modernism, and from neo-liberalism and to the recent oscillations between urban renaissance, the (re)discovery of strategic urban development, the search for sustainability, and the emergence of hybrid forms of development combining modern and post-modern ideas principles.