Queanbeyan, or Not-Canberra
Written: Oct 20 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A healthy counterpoint to Canberra
Cons: Drunk drivers, big boxes, spots of crime
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Canberra |
Review Topic: Sights & Attractions
To see what the planners of Canberra failed to provide for, or chose not to include, one must step just outside of the Australian Capital Territory to visit Queanbeyan. Older than Canberra, but now contiguous with it, Queanbeyan lies outside the Grand Plan of the Federal capital but is totally formed by it in negative. Once a farming town with its own identity, Queanbeyan is now simply Not-Canberra. It contains the low income housing that Canberra lacks, and its random, careless layout appeals to many who are spooked by Canberra’s meticulous order.
At first, it looks like a small, hardscrabble city on the American Plains. Big box retail centers squat in the ruins of downtown, each facing a different direction, like sentries guarding against any return of the Legions of Taste. Battered pickup trucks and other offroad vehicles emit grimy, smoking men and women seemingly on break from a Mad Max film. The motel, in every detail but the phones, could be alongside any freeway in America, right down to the perpetually locked enclosure of the pool that only small children can penetrate.
This grimness, though, is mostly downtown, as though put on for show to impress the tourists. Further out, Queanbeyan unfolded the serenity of its neighborhoods, and I began to feel warmly about the place. Or perhaps that last impression was just the ice cream truck, dingdinging innocently up one street and down another in the starry twilight, harmonizing with the distant trickling sound formed by countless children, parents, dogs, cats, sprinklers, televisions — the ambient chatter of suburban dinnertime.
In his science fiction novel TRITON, Samuel R. Delany writes: "... each Outer Satellite city had set aside a city sector where no law officially held — since ... most cities develop, of necessity, such a neighborhood anyway." The planners of Canberra did not create a space for those who are allergic to planning, so such a place grew organically just outside the city's border. Though it is technically in New South Wales, Queanbeyan is an essential part of Canberra, just as Tijuana plays a vital role in the life on San Diego. Since Canberra would be impossible without Queanbeyan, a quick visit here can be a refreshing counterpoint to the intensely ordered capital experience. Besides, everything is cheaper.
Recommended:
Yes
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Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
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