Canberra · Australia, New Zealand

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As Australia's capital, Canberra is often maligned by outsiders, who associate the city with poor decisions made by greedy politicians. The reality is vastly different, however. Canberra is Australian through and through, and those who live here will tell you that to know Canberra is to love it.

Canberra gives an overall impression of spaciousness, serenity, and almost unnatural order. There are no advertising billboards, no strident colors, and very few buildings more than a dozen stories high. Framing the city are the separate areas of wooded hills and dry grasslands comprising Canberra Nature Park, which fills in much of the terrain just outside the suburban areas. It's paradoxically unlike anywhere else in Australia -- the product of a brave attempt to create an urban utopia -- and its success or failure has fueled many a pub debate.

The need for a national capital arose in 1901, when the Australian states -- which had previously operated separate and often conflicting administrations -- united in a federation. An area of about 2,330 square km (900 square mi) of undulating sheep-grazing country in southeastern New South Wales was set aside and designated the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.). The inland site was chosen partly for reasons of national security and partly to end the bickering between Sydney and Melbourne, both of which claimed to be the country's legitimate capital. The name Canberry -- an Aboriginal word meaning "meeting place" that had been previously applied to this area -- was changed to Canberra for the new city. Like everything else about it, the name was controversial, and debate has raged ever since over which syllable should be stressed. Thesedays, you'll hear Can-bra more often than Can-ber-ra.

From the very beginning this was to be a totally planned city. Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicago architect and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, won an international design competition. Griffin arrived in Canberra in 1913 to supervise construction, but progress was slowed by two world wars and the Great Depression. By 1947 Canberra, with only 15,000 inhabitants, was little more than a country town.

Development increased during the 1950s, and the current population of more than 320,000 makes Canberra by far the largest inland city in Australia. The wide, tree-lined avenues and spacious parklands of present-day Canberra have largely fulfilled Griffin's original plan. The major public buildings are arranged on low knolls on either side of Lake Burley Griffin, the focus of the city. Satellite communities -- using the same radial design of crescents and cul-de-sacs employed in Canberra -- house the city's growing population.