TRANSFORMING CANBERRA

The will to transform Canberra offers a huge opportunity not only for developer and government profit
but also to enrich the city experientially. Public transport is key. In particular, the light rail should be
expanded as a matter of urgency to form a genuine network. Government needs to take hold of the
process, conceptualising Canberra as a series of villages centred on each stop, and encouraging medium
density, medium-rise development that creates lovable urban space.
There are many charming models from which to choose. From two-storeyed terrace and town houses
like Sydney’s inner precincts, to six and eight storeyed garden-centred apartment buildings on the
pattern, say, of London’s Cadogan Square or the ten storey apartment buildings of early 20 th century
Kings Cross. All these define and furnish good civic streets.
It’s not difficult, but it requires government to step up. Developers make buildings but have no interest
in the spaces so defined. Yet these spaces shape our civic lives. Governments must reclaim the
development process. They must recognise the pedestrian experience as primary and require buildings
to shape themselves in order to enhance it.
Then, and only then, might Canberra become a leader, not a laggard, in the epoch-defining challenge to
create global cities that we can inhabit as if they’re localised, twenty-minute walking villages. This is the
good city’s ultimate transformation: to engender in the small human biped that transformative magic
we call love.
© Elizabeth Farrelly 2021
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