February** Dynamic Incentive Program
When it comes to Australia's capital, some people think it's Sydney, and some people think it's Melbourne, but in fact, Canberra is the real capital of Australia.
Located between Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is Australia's eighth-largest city and one of the very few inland cities in Australia. Compared with Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is indeed an unknown small city, but Canberra is a political center built in full accordance with the plan, and has a major inspiration for the development of world cities in terms of spatial layout, green landscape and construction.
Australia is a home of immigrants. In 1606, the Dutch discovered the new continent in the southern hemisphere, and the Europeans named it Australia, which means land of the south. In 1770, the British explorer Captain Cook landed in Australia from Sydney and established a colony. In 1851, the colonists discovered gold in Melbourne, and gold prospectors flocked to Melbourne, causing the town to grow rapidly. In 1901, Australia declared its independence, and the choice of the capital became a new challenge. Sydney is Australia's largest city, and Melbourne is the most important financial center. After discussions, it was finally decided to build a new capital between Sydney and Melbourne, and Melbourne was tentatively designated as the temporary capital.
The capital is an important political center of the country, and the location needs to focus on security issues. Through the study and selection of dozens of settlements, it was finally decided to build the capital between the two mountains in the southern section of the Great Dividing Watershed, and named it "Canberra", which means "place of convergence". Mountains have a good defensive function for the city, and the climate of the mountainous area is cool and habitable.
In 1912, the Commonwealth of Australia** launched a World Urban Design Competition. Out of 137 design proposals, the proposal of American landscape architect Walter Bury Griffin stood out. Griffin's design is influenced by the "pastoral city", which is the closest modern metropolis to the "pastoral city" in terms of form and concept, focusing on the integration of urban space and ecological space. The planning integrates the planning strategy of annular radiation and central axis symmetry into the spatial layout, which fully reflects the landscape aesthetics of regular order.
The texture of the circular road network can be seen everywhere in the city, and the spatial structure of intertwined rings and multiple points is almost exactly the same as that of the "pastoral city".
Griffin planned a huge man-made lake in the city, which was later named Lake Griffin and is now the most important public space in the city of Canberra.
In 1927, construction began to take shape in Canberra, and the capital was moved from Melbourne. Lake Griffin divides the city into clusters, each of which forms a radial spatial structure that is connected by the city's arterial roads. The central area on the south bank of Lake Griffin is the administrative office cluster, and the central point is the Parliament House, which is the political center of Australia. The plan forms an isosceles triangle with Federal Avenue, King Avenue and Constitution Avenue as the three sides, and forms the central axis of the city with the Parliament Building, the Old Parliament Building and the War Memorial as the center, and also constitutes the most important landscape corridor in the city, with public service buildings such as art galleries, science and technology museums, and high courts neatly distributed on both sides of the central axis. The northern area on the north shore of Lake Griffin with Rabbit Island as the center is another urban center of Canberra, with a slightly changed spatial structure, a hexagonal center radial shape, with commerce, residence and education as the main functions.
In addition to the super-large artificial lake, Griffin also has a large amount of ecological space in the group, making Canberra one of the greenest cities in the world, with parks and green spaces accounting for 58% of the city's area.
Canberra is a city built entirely under the guidance of modern planning strategies and is considered a pioneer of eco-baroque planning. Its development history fully reflects the forward-looking planning, political wisdom and respect for nature and culture, and is a model of global urban planning.