Canberra’s Planning History
Some thoughts on Griffin’s planning principles
and other planning legacies
Ed Wensing FPIA
PhD Candidate, National Centre for Indigenous Studies
Visiting Lecturer, Urban and Regional Planning Program, University of Canberra
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I have planned a city that is not like any other
in the world.
I have planned it not in a way that I expected
any government authorities in the world
would accept.
I have planned an ideal city—a city that meets
my ideal of the city of the future.
Walter Burley Griffin, 1912
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Griffin’s plan – 1912
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Source: Collection: National Capital Authority
Library & Information Service
“Griffin’s design was presented in
a most impressive set of
drawings” … “as well as being a
tour de force in presentation, the
drawings show with remarkable
clarity the designer’s
understanding of the topography
of the site and his ideals for the
future city”
(Harrison 1995:29).
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Griffin’s
amended
plan – 1918
•
Source: Collection:
National Capital
Authority Library &
Information Service
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Griffin’s enduring planning ideals
In Griffin’s “Report Explanatory” many planning ideals:
• respect for the topography,
• grouping of federal government activities in a linear
axis (the land axis),
• space for recreation and public gardens,
• a place for the ‘military group’,
• an ‘education group’ for higher education,
• a place for the ‘municipal group’,
• the need for good transport and communication links
between the various ‘groups’ or activity nodes.
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Two of Griffin’s ideals stand out as
still having relevance today.
They were applied by Peter Harrison and his team in
developing the Y Plan in the late 1960s and were
reaffirmed by John Gilchrist and his team when the NCDC
reviewed the Y Plan in the early 1980s.
They are often misunderstood.
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1. Setting the city into the landscape
“Taken as a whole, the site may be considered as an
irregular amphitheatre….” (Griffin 1914)
Griffin used the topography as the setting for the city by
carefully placing the various functions of the city into the
landscape.
“It is the conscious use of space as a design element
which has given Canberra a most distinctive character
unlike, as Griffin said, any other city in the world”
(Harrison 1995:30).
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2. Dispersed employment centres
In his Report Explanatory, Griffin explains the various
functions of the city and their spatial arrangement around
the city based on a land axis and a water axis.
In the Primary Division of functions, Griffin located the
government functions and recreation. In the Secondary
Division, Griffin located the university, the military, the
municipal administration and markets, industry, and the
residential sections.
Griffin also expounded the need for efficient internal
circulation, suggesting wide boulevards connecting the
various centres of activity, and including public transport.
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Distinct Planning Layers and Legacies
• The O’Malley legacy (1890 – 1912)
• The post-Griffin legacy (1913 – 1921)
• The bureaucratic legacy (1921 – 1949)
• The Menzies/Holford/NCDC legacy (1950 – 1988)
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The
Canberra
Outline
Plan - 1965
•
Source: Collection:
National Capital
Authority Library &
Information Service
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The Y Plan 1970
•
Source: Collection: National
Capital Authority Library &
Information Service
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The
Metropolitan
Policy Plan/
Development
Plan - 1984
•
Source: Collection: National
Capital Authority Library &
Information Service
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The Public Ownership of Land
Public ownership of land allowed successive governments
to coordinate planning and development with the provision
of services and facilities.
Canberra’s leasehold system is a natural child of the history
of Australian land settlement.
A ‘planner’s paradise’ because what the planners decided
actually happened.
The leasehold system was an invaluable tool and its
objectives continue to have relevance today as they did 100
years ago.
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Nominating Canberra for
National Heritage Listing
In 2009, Minister for the Environment and Heritage called for
nominations under the theme of Australian Democracy.
Seven people prepared a nomination, including:
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Associate Professor Dianne Firth,
Romaldo Giurgola AO,
David Headon,
Stuart Mackenzie,
Associate Professor Graham Sansom,
Greg Wood
Ed Wensing.
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Page 1 of
our
Nomination
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This map
shows the
outer
limits of
our
nominated
area.
Our second map
showed all the
exclusions.
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Significant features:
• National Triangle & Parliamentary Zone & Land Axis;
• Parliament House, The High Court of Australia, the
Governor-General’s Residence in Yarralumla;
• Lake Burley Griffin and Water Axis;
• Main approach roads & avenues;
• National Capital Open Space System;
• Broad scale metropolitan structure of new towns/centres;
• Extant elements of Griffin’s 1918 plan;
• Building height restrictions in Inner Canberra;
• Public transport corridors and peripheral parkways; and
• River corridors and landscape views to the Brindabellas.
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Five key documents
• Griffin’s 1912 Plan and accompanying Report
Explanatory.
• Griffin’s 1918 amended plan for Canberra.
• The Future Canberra – Canberra Outline Plan
1965.
• Tomorrow’s Canberra, the Ý’ Plan 1970.
• The Metropolitan Canberra Policy
Plan/Development Plan 1984.
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National
Heritage
Criteria
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AHC
publishes
Information
Paper
June 2012
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Show NHL proposed boundary slide here!
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Adelaide Parklands and City Layout
• The Adelaide Parklands and city layout were added to the National
Heritage List in 2008 for its planning history and other values.
• “The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is the physical
expression of the 1837 Adelaide Plan designed and laid out by
Colonel William Light. It has endured as a recognisable historical
layout for over 170 years retaining the key elements of the plan;
encompassing the layout of the two major city areas separated by
the Torrens River, the encircling Park Lands, the six town squares,
and the grid pattern of major and minor roads. It is substantially
intact and reflects Light's design intentions with high integrity.”
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Commonwealth of Australia Gazette No. S238, 7 November 2008.
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The
Adelaide
Parklands
and City
Layout
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John Reps
• “Griffin himself recognised that his competition
design was far from flawless, and he made
many significant changes in it as early as 1913.
…Modest in size and altered in many respects
from Griffin’s vision, it remains an extraordinary
achievement deserving recognition and
protection as one of the treasures, not only of
Australia, but of the entire urban world.”
(Reps 1997:267)
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Thank You.
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