Adelaide is a planned city, designed by South Australia's first surveyor general, Colonel William Light. Plan of the city of Adelaide 1837, by Colonel William Light. Named after Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital of the only British province of free settlement in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city and chose its location near the Torrens River.
Inspired by William Penn, Light's design features Adelaide in a grid layout, interspaced by wide boulevards and large public squares, and completely surrounded by greenery. Early Adelaide was shaped by religious freedom and commitment to political progressivism and civil liberties, leading to pioneering reforms in the world. Adelaide's society remained largely puritanical until the 1970s, when a package of social reforms under Don Dunstan's presidency led to a cultural renaissance. Today, Adelaide is known for its many festivals, as well as its wine, arts and sports.
Named after Queen Adelaide, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital of the only British province of free settlement in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city center and chose its location near the Torrens River. Light's design, now listed as national heritage, sets the city center in a grid layout known as Light's Vision, interspersed by wide boulevards and large public squares, and completely surrounded by parks. The emphasis on public health, comforts and aesthetic qualities through civic design and the provision of public spaces would have an influence on the Garden City Movement, one of the most important urban planning initiatives of the 20th century.
William Baker Ashton was appointed governor of the temporary prison in 1839, and in 1840 George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design the new prison in Adelaide. However, it is the sweeping figure of eight rings of open space centered on the river and encompassing the formal North and South grid designs that distinguishes Light's design for Adelaide. The benefits of Light's design are numerous; Adelaide has had wide multi-lane roads since its inception, an easily navigable grid layout and a beautiful green ring around the city center. The tree planting designed and implemented since the 1850s and the Park Lands collection of living plants, particularly within the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, are outstanding features.
The design of the city and the surrounding belt of Park Lands, devised by Colonel William Light in 1837, anticipate a new approach to urban design, emphasizing public open spaces, which later served as inspiration for the Garden City movement. Adelaide International Airport, located in West Beach, is Australia's newest and most advanced airport terminal and is designed to serve more than 5.8 million passengers annually. The airport is designed to handle 27 aircraft simultaneously and is capable of processing 3,000 passengers per hour. The site of the colony's capital was inspected and plotted by Colonel William Light, South Australia's first surveyor general, with his own original, unique and topographically sensitive design.
Whatever the reason, for those who choose to call the city home, study or take jobs here, establish businesses, move out of the suburbs, or return after some time out, it was the decision of a visionary to locate Adelaide here and create a thoughtful and durable design that has allowed the city to evolve in such a way to offer all those qualities and more. Due to the magnificent scale of the Light plan, you could easily spend more than a day discovering the 28 designated parks that make up the Adelaide Park Lands and several others, making your way through the city network located in. Light's central design was a grid-like plan of wide streets, terraces and public squares, but its brilliance was in embracing the city in a natural green embrace and, in doing so, creating the only “city in a park” in the world. The design of the city is designed to make the most of the topography, an important innovation for the time.
The Adelaide Plan is considered a masterpiece of urban design, a great example of colonial urban planning. . .
