Planning a City in China Based on Canberra

The Australian Institute of Architects is running two talk on planned cities. The first is "China’s Canberra: The past and future of Changchun", 6pm 7 May 2012, in Canberra:

An Exploration of the city of Changchun, whose design was modelled on Canberra. The debate around increasing residential density in Canberra, the Bush Capital, is also a debate taking place on the other side of the world in Changchun, North-East China - another planned city that was in fact modeled on Walter Burley Griffin's plan for the Nation's capital.

Professor Richard Rigby, Executive Director of the ANU China Institute and one of Australia's leading sinologists; Dr Michael Jasper, Assistant Professor - Architecture and Design in the University of Canberra's
Faculty of Arts & Design and Rodney Moss, Director of Cox Architecture and Professor of Architecture at the
University of Canberra, will deliver China’s Canberra: The past and future of Changchun.

Through exploration of the issues facing both cities, Rodney Moss hopes to open up the dialogue in the community about densification. "Although the scale of the two cities is different, the issue is essentially the same" said Mr Moss. "Canberra has the second highest population growth rate in Australia and we will need 60-90,000 new dwellings over the next twenty years. Changchun needs 1,000,000 new dwellings in the same period - the question is - how can the Garden City character of both cities be maintained while managing this growth?"

Using development proposals from both of the cities, Mr Moss and his colleagues will explore the similarities between Canberra and Changchun, challenging some of the prevalent arguments against infill and densification with a view to expanding the debate around this touchstone topic.

Speakers:

Prof Richard Rigby, Executive Director of the ANU China Institute
Dr Michael Jasper, Lecturer Faculty of Arts and Design University of Canberra
Rodney Moss, Architect and Director of Cox Architecture ...