Blurring the vision

Whatever word you want to use, it wasn't always meant to be like this. American architect Walter Burley Griffin was influenced by the City Beautiful and Garden City movements: green bands surrounding areas of settlement, wide boulevards lined with large buildings, formal parks and water features, qualities Canberrans and visitors alike can recognise.

But he also dreamed of Canberra as a dense city populated by 25,000 people, connected by a tram system and with a large railway station in the centre.

Sydney economist, planner and urban strategist Sue Holliday thinks Canberra has failed on both the issues of density and public transport.

She will deliver the 2011 Walter Burley Griffin Memorial Lecture on Wednesday and, in the lead-up to the bush capital's centenary celebrations, says it's time to start thinking about what Canberra means to Australians and how the town can become a modern, exciting Australian city and capital.

''It just seems to me that in the minds of many people, we've lost that sense of a capital city meaning something, and for many younger people especially, I'm not sure that Canberra has that same sense of excitement and imagination as when the idea of a capital city for the federation was first envisaged,'' she says.

Holliday thinks Canberra needs to become denser. ''And by density, I don't mean high-rise buildings, but I do mean making some really buzzy places in Canberra.''

Holliday has a theory that once young people finish university, they leave Canberra to travel, live in ''buzzier'' cities like Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and only return to the capital to raise a family.

''For it to come of age and be a great city, it needs to have a bit more density, a bit more activity, a bit more buzz, and to be honest the baby boomer generation will die off, so it needs to be recaptured by the young as a capital and a city and made into something that's really worth visiting,'' she says.

Holliday has just returned from Europe, where she visited Montpellier in France. During his 20-year reign, the late mayor Georges Freches completely pedestrianised downtown Montpellier, built 150km of bike paths, banished cars from the city centre, put all car parks underground and connected the two outlying suburbs to the city centre with light rail. ''And the people love it. They're there all the time, at the cafes, participating in activities, even in the [cold of] November,'' Holliday says. ''And that's the kind of commitment needed to make Canberra something really special.''

It's time to stop passing the buck and realise that reinvigorating Canberra will take a joint effort by the federal and ACT governments.

''There's no point [the federal government] just handing it over to the ACT government, or the ACT saying, 'No, no, it's all their [responsibility].' We've got to stop this childish behaviour.''

Canberra experienced major growth in an era when private car ownership was becoming popular. This, combined with cheap fuel, has helped make the bush capital a city dominated by cars, where it can take 50minutes to drive from one side of town to the other. But Holliday is hopeful that this can change and thinks improving public transport and weaning Canberrans off their cars would be one step towards creating a more vibrant, dynamic city.

''The plan is perfect to link all the outlying suburbs with fast express light rail, or fast buses, or whatever can be afforded, into Civic, and just get that happening. There's no excuse.''