But when it comes to quality of life, Canberra is up there with many of the world’s high-quality “niche capitals” like Ottawa and Luxembourg.

Professor Clark was in Canberra on Wednesday to present the findings of a major research project commissioned by the Property Council of Australia, highlighting the challenges facing Australian cities in the ‘metropolitan century’.

He told Fairfax Media that other capital cities could look to Canberra when it came to sense of place and high citizen satisfaction.

“This study showed that the five big Australian cities are doing well in all sorts of respects, and the ‘metropolitan century’, as we like to call it, is providing them with huge opportunities, but there are these question marks about whether the brand is better than the product, and indeed whether they've got the tools to really manage their own growth,” he said.

“Interestingly, when you look at Canberra…[it’s] not such a well-known city, but the level of citizen satisfaction is actually extremely high. People enjoy living in Canberra, Canberrans are obviously very proud people, and the quality of life that people have here is great. So I would say that this is not an example of where the brand is better than the product.”

He said Canberra could even be an example of where “the product is better than the brand. There may be a need to tell the Canberra story more clearly and more confidently to the world.”

But he said Canberra fell behind in terms of managing its “knowledge economy”.

“You have this fantastic defence institution, these amazing universities, superb medical and healthcare facilities, and that's great in terms of providing services, but what about the ability to commercialise them in terms of the innovation economy, the start-up scene, the growth companies?” he said.

“It would appear from a preliminary look of additional data that Canberra's not doing that as well as some of its peers, and... this is maybe a function of location, but given it's a capital city with all of this decision-making machinery around it, Canberra doesn't host as many global gatherings, conventions or summits as the other small, purpose-built capitals do. So there may be an opportunity there.”

The Creating Great Australian Cities project, headed by Professor Clark and Tim Moonen, warns that Australia’s major cities risk heading towards “a low-amenity, low-liveability future unless all levels of government, business and the community work together to rethink and refresh how we plan, build and manage our urban areas”.

Professor Clark said Australia’s largest cities fell behind many of the world’s great metropoles when it came to “really thoughtful placemaking”.

“There's a tendency I think to be quite functional with Australian cities, and to think that they need servicing with infrastructure, but not to think about who's creating them as high-quality locations,” he said.

“Interestingly, of course, Canberra does much better on some of these measures, because it's a designed city, because Griffin and everyone else did a job and it's got a clear vernacular as the bush capital, there's a design ethic in the heart of Canberra that gives it a distinctive look and feel and sense of place. So as Canberra grows, it needs to figure out how it can retain that.”