CANBERRA: CHICAGO LANDSCAPER DESIGNED NEW CAPITAL

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Excerpted from my book OUR SUMMER IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND amazon.com

A little history. When Australia federated in 1901, there was a raging debate between
Sydney and Melbourne as to which city should be the new nation’s capital. Being
unsolvable, it was decided to find a new location within the state of New South Wales, provided it was no closer than 100 miles to Sidney. Those from Melbourne were determined to prevent Sydneysiders from profiting from the new capital, and in those days, 100 miles (or about 160 km) was sufficient distance to deny any useful commercial connection.

A committee was formed to recommend a location, and after a long search of about
40 sites, the small settlement of Canberra was chosen, and almost 925 surrounding square miles were set aside for what is now known as the Australian Capital Territory. By the way, in Aussie the pronunciation is “kain-bruh,” an offshoot of an aboriginal word fittingly meaning “meeting place.”

In 1909, an international competition was conducted to select a designer for the new
city, and from 137 entries, Chicago landscape architect, Walter Burley Griffin, who had never been to Australia, was awarded the contract. What an opportunity! A totally blank canvas upon which to design a nation’s capital — and the resulting Canberra is widely regarded as the most successfully planned city in the world. The main features of Griffin’s plan were an artificially created lake, a federal triangle, (not quite similar to L’Enfant’s design for Washington D.C., but capitalizing on the general idea) broad avenues and many parks, with residential and commercial space opposite the triangle of buildings on the
other side of the lake.

Griffin arrived in 1913, but quit in 1920, over disagreements in design changes. The
work progressed slowly thereafter, interrupted by two World Wars and the Depression, but in 1927, a temporary Parliament building was finally completed, and the government moved from Melbourne. In 1963, Lake Burley Griffin was finally finished, and in 1988, almost sixty years from the opening of its temporary building, the new parliament building was opened, essentially completing Griffin’s plans. Despite Australian criticism of Canberra being provincial, boring, and nothing but a politician’s town, I believe Griffin succeeded admirably.

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Photos

LAKE GRIFFIN
DIVIDES CITY ON LEFT AND GOV'T OFFICES ON RIGHT

PARLIAMENT BUILDING
YOU CAN WALK OVER THE TOP OF THE BUILDING, UP ONE SIDE DOWN THE OTHER. AUSIES SAY THEY WALK OVER THEIR POLITICIANS