Designing Australia's Cities: Culture, Commerce and the City Beautiful, 1900-1930

From the last years of the 19th century through the first three decades of the 20th century many Australian architects, planners and urban reformers fell under the influence of the international City Beautiful movement, which was burgeoning in North America and parts of Europe at the time. These architects and planners became actively aware of a need to make the country's cities not just efficient, productive and safe to live and work in, but also works of art. Designing Australia’s Cities is a pioneering study that chronicles and celebrates the ideas, influences, outcomes and enduring legacies of this significant, though often under-appreciated, artistic turn in Australian urban design, which set Australian urban planning and development within a new international context.