Canberra

city · earth

Australia's capital, sited by political compromise between Sydney and Melbourne and laid out from a 1912 international competition won by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. It is the useful counterweight to Brasília and Songdo, because it is a planned capital that worked — and the reasons are unglamorous. It grew slowly over a century rather than opening at scale; it had a guaranteed anchor employer in the federal government; it was never asked to attract an industry it did not already have; and its plan was amended continuously rather than defended. The population reached roughly 482,000 in the Australian Capital Territory at the end of 2024 and territory projections point to about 700,000 by 2050. Canberra is also routinely criticised for what the plan optimised for — low density, car dependence, a diffuse centre — which is the more interesting half of the lesson: a planned city can succeed at being occupied and still lock in the costs of the era that drew it.