Using a chronological framework, the authors focus on planning and management of the largest cities, particularly the role of state governments. After Helen Proudfoot sets the nineteenth century scene from town grids to urban concerns, Robert Freestone delineates the city beautiful notions of the 1900s, while Christine Garnaut continues with the garden city and formal planning movement before the war. The embodiment of these ideas in legislation and subsequent implementation until depression and war is surveyed by Alan Hutchings, followed by the postwar transition to government reconstruction traced by Renate Howe. The proliferation of metropolitan planning after the war is examined by Ian Alexander and then the growth strategies of the 1960s by Ian Morison before the impact of community participation and environmental conservation identified by Margo Huxley. The revival of strategic metropolitan plans during the 1990s is considered by Michael Lennon, while their subsequent concerns are treated in more detail by Stephen Hamnett.

Some of the main themes to emerge from this work are aptly stated by the editors themselves: “These include the continuity and circularity of much planning thought, the ongoing quest for coordination, the centrality of state governments in metropolitan planning and the difficulties of securing inter-governmental cooperation, the unavoidable politicisation of planning, the influence of global developments on theory and practice, the significance of Canberra as both a unique laboratory and mirror of twentieth-century planning ideas, the primacy of suburbanisation in Australian metropolitan evolution, and the not infrequent failures of planning in relation to both theoretical ideals and community needs” (pp. 9-10). To such economic, political, technological, cultural and environmental forces might be added the more personal influence of particular individuals such as Griffin and McInnis as well as specific events especially war and depression which punctuate the text with their presence.

Being multi-authored, metropolitan focused and paperback packaged, this work has its omissions. Some acknowledged by the editors include “the design of country towns and regional Australia, fashions in planning methodology, the making of environmental laws, the rise of specialised epithetical plannings, the founding of the profession, the development of planning education, the fate of those disenfranchised by planning, countless detailed studies of planning in action and so on” (p. 5). More obvious is the regional imbalance which reflects to some extent the location of authors (Adelaide 3, Melbourne/Geelong 3, Sydney 2, Perth 1, Canberra 1, Hobart/Brisbane 0). A Brisbane writer might have given some weight to Archbishop Duhig’s ideas about revitalising interwar slums or even architect G.H.M. Addison’s views on the aesthetic Federation city. Some chapters are quite thematic and therefore selective compared with others which give an overview of developments across the major cities, while the first chapter is a more general survey of early urban history. It could be thought that a synoptic work needs a bibliography as well as notes, and a more comprehensive index.

Such quibbles aside, one might agree with the hope of the editors that “a future historiography of urban studies in Australia will value this book as a useful, interesting and timely collection which helped pave the way for many more detailed historical explorations of the Australian urban planning experience” (p. 10).