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Abstract
Town planning for Australia's cities and towns emerged as a new community and public policy concern in the years after Federation. In 1913, George A. Taylor, the Sydney-based editor of Building magazine, mooted the formation of the Town Planning Association of Australia as a unifying nation-building force. Drawing on newly discovered records of the New South Wales Town Planning Association, this paper investigates moves towards this national voluntary association. It explores both support and resistance to the nationalistic New South Wales-driven initiative. The First Australian Town Planning Conference held in Adelaide in 1917 ultimately presented an alternative model for successful national discourse.
Notes
1Adna F. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1899).
2Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000), 185.
3 Town Planning and Housing (October 1915): 1.
4Robert Freestone, ‘An Imperial Aspect: The Australasian Town Planning Tour of 1914–15’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 44, no. 2 (1998): 159–76.
5‘Town Planning Section: A Review of the Year's Transactions and a Glimpse at the Future’, Building (December 1914): 79.
6Andrew Brown May and Susan Reidy, ‘Beautiful Cities for Beautiful Living: The Victorian Town Planning and Parks Association 1914–1929’ in Seachange: New and Renewed Urban Landscapes 9th Australasian Urban History/Planning History Conference. Proceedings of the Conference, ed. Lynette Finch (Maroochydore: University of the Sunshine Coast, CD, 2008), and Stefan Petrow, ‘Southern Tasmanian Town Planning Association 1915–1939: Campaigning for Urban Environmental Change’, in AUHPH Conference Proceedings.
7Christine Garnaut and Kerrie Round, ‘Pedlers of new ideas: the South Australian Town Planning and Housing Association, 1914_1924’, AUHPH Conference Proceedings.
8See for example Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone, eds, The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000).
9 Proceedings at the Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors, and others interested in the Building of the Federal Capital of Australia (Melbourne: The Congress, May 1901), 3,7 and 9–10.
10Roger Pegrum, The Bush Capital: How Australia Chose Canberra as its Federal City (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1983).
11Robert Freestone, ‘Sulman of Sydney: Modern Planning in Theory and Practice 1890–1930’, Town Planning Review, 67 (January 1996): 45–63.
12John Sulman, An Introduction to the Study of Town Planning in Australia, facsimile edition of the 1921 publication (Sydney: National Trust of Australia New South Wales, 2007), xv–xvi.
13John W. Reps, Canberra 1912: Plans and Planners of the Australian Capital Competition (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 9–10.
14James Weirick, ‘Spirituality and Symbolism in the Work of the Griffins’, in Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin: America, Australia and India, ed. Anne Watson (Sydney: Powerhouse Publications, 1988), 63.
15Reps, 226.
16Robert Freestone and Bronwyn Hanna, Florence Taylor's Hats: Designing, Building and Editing Sydney (Sydney: Halstead Press, 2008).
17Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890–1960 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984), 193.
18K.F. Fischer, Canberra: Myths and Models (Hamburg: Institute of Asian Affairs, 1984).
19 Building (February 1912): 48.
20Leonie Sandercock, Cities for Sale: Property, Politics and Urban Planning in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), 19.
21Richard Stanton, Evidence Taken by the Royal Commission on the Housing Conditions of the People in the Metropolis, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1917, 23 March 1915, 308.
22Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
23George Taylor, Evidence Taken, 23 March 1915, 312.
24George A. Taylor, Town Planning with Common Sense (Sydney: Building Ltd, 1918), 10.
25Fischer, 32.
26George A. Taylor, ‘The Fight for Canberra: The History of the Chequered Career of Australia's Capital City’, Town Planning and Housing Review (July 1915): 36.
27George A. Taylor, ‘The Fight for Canberra: The History of the Chequered Career of Australia's Capital City’, Town Planning and Housing Review (July 1915): 1.
30Florence M. Taylor, ‘Home Building Section’, Building (October 1913): 129–30.
28George A. Taylor, ‘Town Planning for Australasia’, Building (September 1913): 66–68.
29George A. Taylor, ‘A Town Planning Association’, Building (October 1913): 44.
31‘The Town Planning Association of Australia Formed’, Building (November 1913): 89.
32 Building (October 1913): 44.
33Alex Millmow, ‘Robert Francis Irvine’, in A Biographical Dictionary of Australian and New Zealand Economists, ed. J.E. King (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), 150–53.
34Robert Freestone, Model Communities: The Garden City Movement in Australia (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1989), 78.
35 Local Government Journal of Australasia and Construction (3 November 1913): 5.
37‘What the Associations are Doing’, Town Planning and Housing (April 1915): 2.
36 Town Planning and Housing (April 1915): 1.
38 Town Planning and Housing (September 1915): 1.
39‘An Unfortunate Division’, Town Planning and Housing (May 1915): 30.
40Quoted in Town Planning and Housing (May 1915): 16.
41 Town Planning and Housing (August 1915): 1.
42 Town Planning and Housing (May 1916): 3.
43 Town Planning and Housing (April 1915): 17.
44 Town Planning and Housing (October 1915): 3, 21.
45‘Victorian Association Annual Meeting: a Record of the Year's Work’, Town Planning and Housing (25 October 1915): 6.
46‘Linking Up’, Town Planning and Housing (June 1915): 1.
47Town Planning Association of New South Wales (TPANSW) Papers, Mitchell Library (ML) MSS209 Box 1, Folder May 1916.
48Sulman, Letter to J.B. Huggan, Victorian Town Planning and Parks Association (VTPPA), 11 September 1916, TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder September 1916.
49Harold Boas, Letter to TPANSW, 16 November 1916, TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder December 1916.
50 Town Planning and Housing (October 1915): 15.
51Sulman, Letter, 22 August 1916, TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder September 1916.
52Sulman, Letter, 22 August 1916.
53 Mercury, 7 December 1916 and 25 May 1917; personal communication from Stefan Petrow to the author, January 2008.
54Sulman, President's Report to Council of TPANSW in TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder September 1916.
55W H Huxham, Letter to Sulman, 9 October 1916 in TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder October 1916.
56H E Fuller, Letter to TPANSW, 9 October 1916 in TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder October 1916.
57Minutes of Meeting held 12 October 1916 on formation of a federal executive in TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder November 1916.
58Sulman, Letter to Mr J. Garlick, (NSW Under-Secretary for Local Government, 3 April 1917 in TPANSW Papers, Mitchell Library MSS209 Box 1, Folder April 1917.
59Sulman, Letter to Mr J. Garlick, Folder April 1917.
60Sulman, Letter to Mr J. Garlick, Folder April 1917.
61TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 2, Folders February 1917 and May 1918 and TPANSW Minutes 1919–1924. See also Building, February 1916: 17–33, and Building, November 1916: 100–102.
62Australian Town Planning Conference and Exhibition, Official Volume of Proceedings of the First Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition (Adelaide: 17 to 24 October 1917), 4.
63Official Volume of Proceedings of the First Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition, 9.
64Official Volume of Proceedings of the First Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition, 7–9.
65Official Volume of Proceedings of the First Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition, 156.
66Sulman, President's Report to Council of TPANSW in TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folder November 1917.
67Sulman, Letter to Huggan, VTPPA, 16 May 1917, and Flannagan, Southern Tasmanian Town Planning Association (STTPA) to Cowdery, TPANSW, 1 June 1917, TPANSW Papers, ML MSS209 Box 1, Folders May/June 1917.
68Second Australian Town Planning Conference and Exhibition, Official Volume of Proceedings of the Second Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition, (Brisbane: 30 July to 6 August 1918), 185.
69Official Volume of Proceedings of the Second Australian Town Planning and Housing Exhibition, 1918, 186.
70Freestone, Model Communities, 78.
71 1951 Federal Congress on Regional and Town Planning’ Record of Proceedings (Sydney: Town and Country Planning Institute of Australia; Melbourne: Planning Institute of Australia; Adelaide: Town Planning Institute of South Australia, 1951), 3.