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This paper traces the Australian capital city of Canberra's representation through official, government-sponsored, Australian documentary films made between 1900 and 1945. Through a small sample of selected films, that are well preserved and held in the national film archives, we discuss their filmic intention, form, technical production and reception. In these forty plus years which end prior to the advent of technicolour, there was a progression in technical sophistication of the genre from silent to sound, and from newsreel-style reportage of pomp and ceremony towards more informal, aspirational pictures that attempt to conjure how everyday lives could be lived in the fledgling city of Canberra. We suggest that these kinds of films, that might be dismissed as mere propaganda, are useful in adding to our understanding of how documentaries became a tool in the representation and communication of a rapidly shifting national identity, that was advanced concurrently through the planning and building of a new capital city and the evolution of documentary films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1912, Walter Burley Griffin famously won the international design competition for Australia's national capital, later named Canberra. In 1914, Walter – along with his wife and professional partner Marion Mahony Griffin – moved from their native Chicago to Australia to orchestrate Canberra's realization. On a return visit to the USA in 1925, Walter was commissioned to lay out an extension to the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. Until now, this project was only known from a singular, passing mention of it in a period newspaper article. This report reconstructs the writer's convoluted effort – spanning more than a decade – to confirm Walter Burley Griffin's authorship of this enigmatic project and to locate the plan itself. In parallel, it recovers, partly based upon evidence-derived suppositions, the circumstances surrounding what proved to be Griffin's final American commission. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the 1960–70s, there was a proposal to expand the administrative border of Canberra into the neighbouring state New South Wales to accommodate long-term population growth and urban development. However, this attempt failed ultimately. This study investigates this 'remaking' of the border, and revisits the same issue in the planning and development context of the twenty-first century. It employs three conceptual constructs – 'bordering', 'debording', and 'rebordering' – to draw insights into the nexus between the border's (re)making, dominant planning thinking, and emerging development process. It uses a mix of primary and secondary sources of data and information collected from the National Archives of Australia, newspaper clippings of The Canberra Times, interviews with planners involved, Australian Census data, and planning literature. It finds that the border expansion proposal was driven by a political advocacy out of a modernist technocratic planning vision for a linear city, and was based on an over-optimistic and mechanical population projection. However, as a highly political initiative, its failure was doomed by political strains and changes, and local community's concerns. Knowing this history contributes to tackling a similar issue in today's paradox of a planning paradigm for compactness and sustainability and an emerging development expansion onto the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Celebrated architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham enjoyed a rise to fame in the aftermath of his widely acclaimed achievement as Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition, held in his adopted Chicago in 1893. Roughly in parallel with Burnham's rise, town planning movements were coalescing in Australia, and it would not be long until the Chicagoan's name was circulating in Australian professional circles. This is a pilot study broadly aimed at chronicling and interpreting Australian awareness of Daniel Burnham at the turn of the twentieth century. More specifically, it is concerned with the reception of Burnham's civic design ideals and why some believed them to be of antipodean relevance. Their Australian impact, however, is beyond the present study's scope. Reciprocally, this essay also surveys Burnham's knowledge of Australia. Special emphasis is given to Burnham within the context of the Australia's Federal Capital competition (1912), arguing that although the Chicagoan did not compete, he profoundly, albeit vicariously, impacted the capital's design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Canberra is the only really modern city in the world. Not that that has been made obvious to the casual glance, but a structure can only be truly modern when the foundations are properly laid for that particular thing. . . . For this science . . . had died out and was no longer practiced." (Marion Mahony Griffin, 'Canberra, its Designer and its Plan', The Centennial Anniversary of the Founding of Australia, Magic of America, Federal Battle, p. 380.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]