Learning from LA: Australian Responses to Los Angeles Urbanism 1910–1960

Abstract

From the 1910s to the 1950s, Los Angeles was a surprising exemplar of progressive planning for Australian cities. LA’s planned neighborhoods early captured the garden suburb ideal. Regional planning initiatives attracted increasing interest, then transport planning and management of auto traffic. Mechanisms of urban governance and formal alliances between private and public sectors followed. This learning from abroad is set within the paradigm of urban policy transfer, highlighting the selectivity of borrowing within the dominant ideology of town and country planning. From the 1960s, positive connotations would be extinguished by new representations of a sprawling, divided, and polluted metropolis.