Adelaide,
South Australia
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Adelaide was planned and surveyed by Colonel William Light in the 1830's. The basic city plan that he laid out still remains today, as seen in the map to the right (click the map to enlarge; click here to see a map of what Adelaide looked like in the 1850's). Light's vision was much influenced by the garden city principles of England: he envisioned formal squares, wide streets, and a belt of parklands. Indeed, there are five squares within the CBD (outlined in green), a wide belt of parklands surrounding the city center, and the main streets in the city were built to be at least 66 feet wide, while the terraces (the streets on the edges of the CBD; outlined in red to the right) were at least 100 feet wide. One can also see the Torrens River which cuts through the city between the CBD and North Adelaide. Most of Adelaide's water supply came from local streams and cachements in the Lofties until that source ran out around WWII. Now, the city has built a pipeline to bring water from the Murray River, but that is creating some conflicts with agricultural uses and causing salination problems.  |
Adelaide's city plan today is practically identical to the original design by Col. Light. Note that East terrace is not a straight line, this is part of the geography of power that was built into the city; this increases the surface area between the city and the parklands on the east side, providing wealthier residents with a view of the parklands and the Lofty Ranges beyond. The photo to the left is taken from the hill in North Adelaide where Col. Light was said to have had his vision for the city. The parklands are in the foreground, the CBD in the distance, and the stadium lights are from the footy stadium in the parklands. One can also see the foothills rising to the left. |
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Planning Now and into the Future. In 1967, South Australia adopted a plan for Adelaide that essentially assumed that automobile-dependent suburbanization would continue. While this plan sought to direct the growth of these suburbs, it relied mostly on negative controls (instead of making inner-city locations more desirable and public transportation more accessible). In 1990, a group was commissioned to review and make recommendations on the 1967 plan. Some of the major new directions the Planning Review suggested include: making protection of agriculture and viticulture a priority; protection of watersheds and Lofty Ranges; selective redevelopment of old housing projects, i.e. Elizabeth. Click on the map to the left to enlarge it, and click here for the Planning Strategy for Metropolitan Adelaide, which has numbers that correspond to the map. |
