Australian Heritage Database
Places for Decision
Class: Historic 

Identification	
List: 	National Heritage List	
Name of Place: 	The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout	
Other Names: 	The Adelaide Park Lands and Colonel Lights Plan	
Place ID: 	105758	
File No: 	3/03/001/0279	
		
Nomination Date: 	27/09/2004	
Principal Group: 	Parks, Gardens and Trees	
 		
Status		
Legal Status: 	01/12/2005 - Nominated place	
Admin Status: 	09/07/2007 - Assessment by AHC completed	
 		
Assessment		
		
Recommendation: 	Place meets one or more NHL criteria	
Assessor's Comments: 		
Other Assessments: 	: 	
 		
Location		
Nearest Town: 	Adelaide	
   Distance from town (km): 		
   Direction from town: 		
Area (ha): 	1000	
Address: 	South Tce, Adelaide, SA, 5000	
LGA: 	Adelaide City SA	
Location/Boundaries:
Proposed final boundary:
 
About 900ha in Adelaide and North Adelaide, defined as follows:
1.   an area with an outer boundary defined by the centerlines of the following streets: Park Terrace, Fitzroy Terrace, Robe Terrace, Park Terrace (east), Hackney Road, Dequetteville Terrace, Fullarton Road, Greenhill Road, the Mile End Railway line and Port Road. 
2.   Within 1. above, the following areas are excluded. Areas 1. and 2. have boundaries that are defined by the road reserve boundaries of the named streets, such that each road reserve is included in the place:
Area 1: North Terrace, East Terrace, South Terrace and West Terrace
Area 2: Barton Terrace West, O’Connell Street, Barton Terrace East, Lefevre Terrace, Kingston Terrace, Kingston Terrace East, Mann Terrace, MacKinnon Parade, Brougham Place, Sir Edwin Smith Avenue (originally named Roberts Place), Pennington Terrace, Palmer Place, Brougham Place, Montefiore Hill, Strangways Terrace, Mills Terrace.
Area 3: All land under the care, control and management of State Government Agencies and Instrumentalities, other than: West Terrace Cemetery (Land ID F219057 A7), Adelaide Zoo (H105100 S590, S1187), Adelaide Botanic Gardens (D66751 A101, A102), Botanic Park (H105100 S574) and Torrens Parade Ground and Buildings (F38386 A23).
Area 4: Government House and grounds (H105100 S755 and S757), Old and New Parliament Houses and grounds (H105100 S747 and S748).
Area 5: Land owned by Rail Track Corp Ltd and Australian National Railways (F14185 A22; F22072 A23, A24 and A25; D15497 A29; F14184 A20; D56872 A58 and D58245 A20).
3.   Notwithstanding the areas excluded in 2. above, the following areas are included in the place:
(a)       six squares and two gardens being: In North Adelaide - Wellington Square, Palmer Gardens and Brougham Gardens and in Adelaide - Victoria Square, Hindmarsh Square, Hurtle Square, Whitmore Square and Light Square, and
(b)       the grid of major roads (including the whole of each road reserve) consisting of the City centre grid defined by four major roads: East Terrace, North Terrace, West Terrace and South Terrace; the following streets traversing the City east-west: Hindley, Currie, Waymouth, Franklin, Grote, Gouger, Wright, Sturt, Gilbert, Rundle, Grenfell, Pine, Flinders, Wakefield, Angas, Carrington, Halifax and Gilles, the following streets running north-south: Morphett, King William, Pulteney and Hutt; and
(c)        three smaller grids in North Adelaide including the following major streets (including the whole of each road reserve): Barton Terrace East, Mills Terrace, Strangways Terrace, Ward Street, Lefevre Terrace, Hill, Jeffcott, O’Connell, Childers, Buxton, Gover, Molesworth, Tynte, Barnard, Archer Streets, Brougham Place, Palmer Place, Kermode Street, Pennington Terrace, Kingston Terrace, Kingston Terrace East, Mann Terrace, MacKinnon Parade, Jerningham, Stanley, and Melbourne Streets.
Assessor's Summary of Significance:
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is a significant example of early colonial planning which has retained key elements of its historical layout for over one hundred and seventy years.
 
The 1837 Adelaide Plan attributed to Colonel William Light and the establishment of Adelaide marks a significant turning point in the settlement of Australia.  Prior to this, settlement had been in the form of penal colonies or military outposts where the chief labour supply was convicts.
 
The Colony of South Australia was conceived as a commercial enterprise based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s theory of systematic colonisation.  It was to be established by free settlers who would make a society that would be ‘respectable’ and ‘self-supporting’.  
 
The Adelaide Plan was the basis for attracting free settlers, offering certainty of land tenure and a high degree of amenity.   Being formally laid out prior to settlement, with a grid pattern and wide streets and town squares, the Plan reflected new town planning conventions and contemporary ideas about the provision of common or reserved land for its aesthetic qualities, public health and recreation.  
 
The Plan endures today in the form of the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout.  The key elements of the Plan remain substantially intact, including the layout of the two major city areas, separated by the meandering Torrens River, the encircling Park Lands , the six town squares, the gardens and the grid pattern of major and minor roads.
 
The Park Lands, in particular, are significant for the longevity of protection and conservation and have high social value to South Australians who regard them as fundamental to the character and ambience of the city of Adelaide.
 
The national significance of the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout lies in its design excellence.  The Adelaide Plan is regarded as a masterwork of urban design, a grand example of colonial urban planning.  The city grid and defining park lands were laid over the shallow river valley with its gentle undulations, described by Light as the Adelaide Plains.  The city layout is designed to take full advantage of the topography, an important innovation for the time.  The streets were sited and planned to maximise views and vistas through the city and Park Lands and from the city to the Adelaide Hills.  The encircling Park Lands provide for health and recreation for the inhabitants while setting the city limits and preventing speculative land sales on the perimeter. 
 
The emphasis on public health, amenity and aesthetic qualities through civic design and provision of public spaces were to have an influence on the Garden City Movement, one of the most significant urban planning initiatives of the twentieth century. Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the Garden City Movement cites the Adelaide Plan as an exemplar in his Garden Cities of Tomorrow.
 
Even before this influence, however, the Adelaide Plan was used as a model for the founding of many towns in Australian and New Zealand.  It is regarded by historians and town planners as a major achievement in nineteenth century town planning.
 
The Adelaide Park Lands and Historic Layout is also significant for its association with Colonel William Light who is credited with the Adelaide Plan and its physical expression in the form of the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout.     
 
Draft Values:	
Criterion	Values	Rating	
A Events, Processes	The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is the physical expression of the 1837 Adelaide Plan designed and laid out by Colonel William Light. It has endured as a recognisable historical layout for over 170 years retaining the key elements of the plan; encompassing the layout of the two major city areas separated by the Torrens River, the encircling Park Lands, the six town squares, all the gardens within the Park Lands, and the grid pattern of major and minor roads. It is substantially intact and reflects Light's design intentions with high integrity. 
 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is of outstanding importance because it signifies a turning point in the settlement of Australia.  It was the first place in Australia to be planned and developed by free settlers, not as a penal settlement or military outpost.  The colony of South Australia was established by incorporation as a commercial venture supported by the British Government, based on Edward Wakefield's theory of systematic colonisation.  To be commercially successful, there needed to be contained settlement to avoid speculative land sales and this settlement needed to be designed and planned to attract free settlers and to provide them with security of land tenure.  The city layout with its grid plan expedited the process of land survey enabling both rapid settlement of land and certainty of title.  The wide streets and abundant open spaces provided amenity while the surrounding park lands ensured a defined town boundary.  These elements are discernable today. 
 
Adelaide Park Lands is also significant for the longevity of its protection and conservation. The Adelaide Municipal Corporation Act (1840) established the city council as the ‘conservators’ of the city and parklands. The establishment of the Park Lands Preservation Society in 1903, along with successive community organisations marks a continuing pattern in safeguarding the significance of the Park Lands for the Adelaide community. 
 
The Adelaide Plan was highly influential as a model for planning other towns in Australia and overseas.  It is acknowledged by town planners and historians as a major influence on the Garden City Planning movement one of the most important urban planning initiatives. 	AT	
B Rarity	The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is rare as the most complete example of nineteenth century colonial planning where planning and survey were undertaken prior to settlement.  The historical layout as conceived in the 1837 Adelaide Plan remains clearly legible today. The place is also the only Australian capital city to be completely enclosed by parklands and is the most extensive and substantially intact nineteenth century park lands in Australia.
 	AT	
D Principal characteristics of a class of places	Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is an exemplar of a nineteenth century planned urban centre.  It demonstrates the principal characteristics of a nineteenth century city including a defined boundary, streets in a gridded pattern, wide streets, public squares, spacious rectangular blocks and expansive public open space for commons and public domains.  The expression of these features with their generous open space reflects the early theories and ideas of the Garden City movement of an urban area set in publicly accessible open space.
 	AT	
F Creative or technical achievement	Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is regarded throughout Australia and the world as a masterwork of urban design. Elements of the Adelaide Plan that contribute to the design excellence are the use of the encircling park lands to define the boundary of the development of the city and to provide for health, public access and recreation thereby meeting both economic and social requirements.  Designing the city layout to respond to the topography was highly innovative for its time with the northern sections of the city located and angled to take advantage of the rising ground while retaining the Torrens River as a feature within the parklands. The judicious siting and wide streets maximised views and vistas through the city and Park Lands and from the city to the Adelaide Hills.  Light's planning innovation is supported by substantial historical documentation. 
 
The formal organisation, delineation and dedication of the Park Lands space was also pioneering.
 
The creativity of the city and parkland design is clearly legible in the contemporary landscape viewed from the air or from the Adelaide Hills.  The civic design of Adelaide was used as a model for founding many other towns in Australia and New Zealand and it is cited in later seminal Garden City planning texts including Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard.
	AT	
G Social value	The Adelaide Park Lands has outstanding social value to South Australians who see them as fundamental to the character and ambience of the city.   
 
The present Adelaide Parklands Preservation Society is the latest in a  long history of community groups dedicated to protecting the Adelaide Park Lands. These have included the Park Lands Defence Association (1869-87), the Park Lands Preservation League (1903, 1948) and the National Trust of South Australia. The longevity of the involvement of community groups in the protection and safeguarding of Australian park lands is exceptional.
 	AT	
H Significant people	Colonel William Light is most famously associated with the plan of Adelaide.  He bore the ultimate responsibility, as recorded in his surviving publications and letters. 
 	AT	
Historic Themes: 
Group: 03 Developing local, regional and national economies 
  Themes: 03.03 Surveying the continent 
    Sub-Themes: 03.03.05 Laying out boundaries
Group: 04 Building settlements, towns and cities 
  Themes: 04.01 Planning urban settlements 
    Sub-Themes: 04.01.04 Creating capital cities 
Group: 04 Building settlements, towns and cities 
  Themes: 04.01 Planning urban settlements 
    Sub-Themes: 
Group: 04 Building settlements, towns and cities 
  Themes: 04.06 Remembering significant phases in the development of settlements, towns and cities 
    Sub-Themes: 
Group: 08 Developing Australia's cultural life 
  Themes: 08.01 Organising recreation 
    Sub-Themes: 08.01.03 Developing public parks and gardens 
Nominator's Summary of Significance:
The three most significant World Heritage Values:

1. The Adelaide Park Lands are the oldest 'set apart' and 'dedicated' public park lands in the world -15th March, 1837 by Colonel William Light.
- All of the Park Lands and Squares (excepting certain reserves for Government purposes), were 'dedicated' for the USE and RECREATION of the citizens in perpetuity and paid for from the Emigration Fund - a circumstance which prevailed in no other country to that time.
- UK's oldest public park is Birkenhead, designed 1843 - officially opened 1847.
- USA's oldest public park is Boston Common - the garden section was first laid out in 1837.

2. The FIRST PIECE OF LEGISLATION (Section 3 of the 1842 Imperial Waste Lands Act), protecting the 'dedication' of 'places for public recreation and health', arose directly as a result of the reservation/purchase by promissory notes in December 1839 of OUR Park Lands.
- This Act was applied to all the other British Colonies around the world, including greater NSW, WA, Tasmania and to New Zealand (1841), after which, Park reserves boomed.
- Legislation enabling public parks was not passed in the UK until 1847.
- The expressions 'Park Lands' (parklands*) originated with OUR Park Lands. The word 'park-land' first appears in Robert Gouger's book South Australia in 1837.

3. CUSTODIANSHIP defined. First (Citizens committee) public Park Lands Trust proposed 15th October, 1839.
- Adelaide was the first City to have public Park Keepers 1839.
- In August 1840 Adelaide became the first Municipal Corporation in Australia, (4th in any British colony), and the first modern Borough government after the passing of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Reform Act, making them the 'conservators' of the City and Park Lands.

(* parkland (Macquarie) n. 1. a grassland region with isolated or grouped trees, usu. in temperate regions. 2. S.A. a public garden or park)
Description:
The City of Adelaide is divided into two distinct sectors that straddle the River Torrens, the City centre to the south, and suburban North Adelaide. The City has a hierarchical grid street pattern, contains six town squares and is entirely surrounded by Park Lands. The city of Adelaide was originally laid out as 1042 town acres and in some instances the original boundaries are still evident. South Adelaide, the city centre comprises 700 acres while the North Adelaide residential area covers the remaining 342 acres. Six squares were laid out within the City of Adelaide.

The city streets are organised into four blocks, with the City centre encompassing one large block, and North Adelaide three smaller blocks. The siting of the blocks reflects the topography of the area, with the main block situated on generally flat ground and the other three blocks, each at an angle with the others, on higher land in North Adelaide. The main block, the City centre, is defined by four major roads: East Terrace, North Terrace, West Terrace and South Terrace. In total, eleven original streets traverse the City east-west and six original streets traverse it north-south. Nine streets which traverse the City east-west culminate in the centre at King William Street which also defines name changes for the streets running east-west. The streets are primarily named after key historical figures: Rundle, Grenfell, Pine, Flinders, Wakefield, Angas, Carrington, Halifax, Gilles, Gilbert, Start, Wright, Gouger, Grote, Franklin, Waymouth, Currie and Hindley Streets. The central streets in this grid, Wakefield and Grote Streets are marginally wider than the others, to illustrate their greater importance. The City also contains numerous minor streets that were constructed within a few years of survey, but were not part of the original plan. 

North Adelaide comprises three smaller grids in which the majority of original streets run east-west. The major grid of North Adelaide is defined by Barton Terrace, Lefevre Terrace, Ward Street and Hill Street, with O’Connell Street as the major thoroughfare and Wellington Square in the centre.

The streets in both the City centre and North Adelaide are broken up intermittently by six town squares before they culminate at the Park Lands. Five squares, Victoria, Hurtle, Whitmore, Hindmarsh and Light Squares are located within South Adelaide, while Wellington Square is in North Adelaide. Some squares have been altered with the road ways around and through some of the squares changed, both from an urban design perspective and to address traffic management issues. The substantial design of each Square, except Victoria Square, remains intact. These changes reflect changing aesthetic tastes and requirements in the twentieth century.

Each square retains a distinct character, with different development on the edges. The form of Victoria Square remains, but its design, driven primarily by traffic changes, has changed markedly. It is no longer a focus for the City for pedestrians. It has retained a primarily public function with and office development around its perimeter. Hurtle and Whitmore Squares are more residential, while Hindmarsh and Light Squares accommodate more commercial uses. Wellington Square, the only square in North Adelaide, is surrounded by primarily single storey development, but of a village character, which includes a former shop, former Church and public house. 

The squares contribute to the public use of the City, providing open green spaces for residents, workers and visitors who value them highly. 

The Park Lands comprise over 700 hectares providing a continuous belt which encircle the City and North Adelaide. The Park Lands vary in character from cultural landscapes, to recreational landscapes, and natural landscapes. Some areas are laid out as formal gardens, other areas have a rural character and others are used primarily for sporting uses.

The Park Lands act as a buffer to the City Centre, and also provide both passive and active recreational uses to the community. They are the setting for numerous public functions, and serve an aesthetic function in defining the city. The Park Lands are visible from many parts of the City and North Adelaide and form end points for vistas through the City streets. They contribute to views out of the City, together with the distant views of the Adelaide Hills in the background, as well as providing views into the City. The visual character of the Park varies with its many uses - formal gardens and lawns, informal parks of turf and trees, a variety of sports fields, with associated buildings and facilities. The Adelaide Parklands have been valued by many South Australians over time for their aesthetic qualities, and as a place for recreation and other community activities. 
The Park Lands are described as a single feature, yet they vary in character greatly from area to area. Some areas are laid out as formal gardens, others have a rural character and others are used primarily for sporting uses.  The Park Lands also accommodate many other, mostly public, uses in areas identified as reserves by Light, such as the West Terrace Cemetery and the Governor’s Domain, as well as in other areas alienated from the original Park Lands as defined by Light, such as the civic uses of North Terrace and Victoria Park Racecourse. Many cultural institutions occupying the park Lands: the Botanic Gardens, Zoo, the State Library, Migration Museum, the Art Gallery, the SA Museum, Government House, Parliament House, the Festival Theatre and Playhouse, the Convention Centre, the Parade Ground, the hospital, Adelaide University and Adelaide High School. Other reserves include the Torrens linear park, Government Walk, the Parade Ground, the Pioneer Women’s Gardens, the Adelaide Oval and two public golf courses.

Today there is little physical evidence remaining of Aboriginal occupation and of the pre-colonial landscape. This includes scarred trees, occupational sites, quarrying sites, human remains and stone artefacts (Ellis, 1976: 1). However there is no evidence to suggest that any of these examples exist within the Adelaide Park Lands with the exception of the stone artefacts.

The Adelaide parklands continue to be significant to Kaurna and other Aboriginal people because:
•	of areas where they camped prior to and since European settlement, 
•	many Aboriginal people are buried in West Terrace Cemetery,  
•	the area continues to be a contemporary meeting place for some Aboriginal people, 
•	various stone artefacts have been found during heritage surveys conducted in the area, and 
•	on April 22nd, 1844 the Aboriginal Protector (Moorehouse) prevented an attempt by the local Aboriginals to repeat their annual and traditional contest between the Encounter Bay and Murray tribes within the parklands (Adelaide City Council, #24, 2005). 

The South Australian Old and New Parliament Houses is entered into the National Heritage List (Data Base No. 105710).  The Adelaide Park Lands and the City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands are listed in the Register of the National Estate (RNE) (Register Nos: 6442 and 102551). The following places are individually listed within the RNE: the Zoological Gardens (Register Nos: 8593 and 18585), the Botanic Gardens (Register No. 6433), the Elder Park Bandstand (Register No. 6351), the Women's War Memorial Gardens (Register No. 14568), the Adelaide Oval and Surrounds (Register No.19236), Victoria Park Racecourse (Register No. 18546), Art Gallery of South Australia (Register No. 6396), Barr Smith Library (within the University grounds) (Register No. 6365), Bonython Hall (within the University grounds) (Register No. 6368), Brookman Hall (Register No. 6382), Catholic Chapel, West Terrace Cemetery (Register No. 6357),  Cross of Sacrifice/Stone of Remembrance (Register No. 14568), Elder Hall (Register No. 6367), Government House and Grounds (Register No. 6328), Union Building Group, Margaret Graham Nurses Home, Adelaide Oval Scoreboard, Yarrabee, River Torrens (outside Adelaide City), Institute Building (former), Bank of Adelaide (former), Tropical House, Main Gates, Botanic Gardens, Watch House, Catholic Chapel, Chapel to Former Destitute Asylum, Mitchell Building, Albert Bridge (road bridge), Schoolroom to Former Mounted Police Barracks, Historical Museum, Mortlock Library, South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia, Old Parliament House, Old Mounted Police Barracks, Adelaide Gaol (former), Powder Magazine (former) and Surrounding Walls, North Adelaide Conservation Area, Victoria Square Conservation Area, River Torrens (within Adelaide City), Mitchell Gates and Fencing, Adelaide Railway Station, Administration Building and Bays 1 - 6 Running Shed, South African War Memorial, Royal Adelaide Hospital Historic Buildings Group, North Adelaide Railway Station, Old Grandstand, Hartley Building, Torrens Training Depot, University Foot Bridge, Adelaide Bridge, Torrens Lake Weir and Footbridge, Rose Garden Fountain and Botanic Garden Toolshed. 
 
Over 70 places in the Adelaide Park Lands are entered in the South Australian Heritage Register. Most notably these include the institutions along North Terrace, including the Adelaide Railway Station, Old and New Parliament Houses, and buildings belonging to the State Library and South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia, University of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital (SA Heritage Branch, 2005).
Analysis:
Boundary
The Adelaide City Council supports the nomination of the Adelaide Park Lands to the NHL, it recommends broadening the listing to cover all of Light’s Plan, as the Park Lands are an important component of the Plan. Its nomination for the Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands (data base no:105825) includes the grid pattern with the 1837 layout of streets. The Adelaide City Council considers that the City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is of national and international significance and warrants World Heritage listing (Letter of 8 March 2005). The Adelaide City Council excluded all buildings, structures and plantings within the city of Adelaide from its nomination although it included the land with these place. 
 
The Australian Heritage Council at their 29th meeting, agreed to combine the nominated places of the 'Adelaide Parklands' and the 'City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Parklands' to one place that encompassed a summation of the two nominations, titled the Adelaide Parklands and City Layout 

Values
The Adelaide Park Lands was nominated against criteria (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g), (h) and (i).  The nominator has suggested that taskforces be set up to determine whether the place has values against criteria (g) and (i).  The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is nominated against criteria (b), (e), (f), (g), (h) and (i). 

DEW received substantial information relating to the values of the place following the public announcement of the nominations. This information is summarised below. As well DEW funded a study, Urban and Town Planning Thematic Heritage Study undertaken by City futures Research Centre, 2007.  The study provided a draft NHL assessment of  the Plan of Adelaide within the context of other urban heritage places. The study involved deliberations with experts to develop indicators of significance which are used in the assessment. Information from the study is incorporated into the assessment report.

Summary of information received by DEW in support of the nomination
The Royal Geographic Society of South Australia Inc made the following comments on the nomination. 
•	The Adelaide Park Lands, as reserved and delineated by Colonel William Light include Hindmarsh, Hurtle, Light, Victoria, Wellington and Whitmore Squares, and Brougham, Palmer and Roberts Gardens, along with the associated lands reserved from sale in 1837 and dedicated as streets and terraces. 
•	Consideration should be given to West Terrace Cemetery as an integral part of the plan of the city, and one of the early public cemeteries in the British Empire 
•	The park lands as a single continuous element were fundamental to the original design of Adelaide 
•	The Adelaide Park Lands is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of 19th century parks and gardens, and ideals on public utility and recreation, including freely accessible public space, and an early example of a public cemetery ' (Royal Geographic Society of South Australia Inc, 2005:4). 
•	Particular consideration should be given to the research of John Porter, past Surveyor-General of South Australia, identifying Colonel Light as the first surveyor in the world to use a trigonometrical survey for cadastral purposes, and with the south west Park Lands as one end of Light's base line (Royal Geographic Society of South Australia Inc, 2005:6). 
•	The planning and implementation of South Australia during great reforms in the British Empire, is a model of systematic colonisation based on the Wakefield principle relating to land, labour, capital and concentration of settlement, and as a non-convict colony with free British institutions is important in the history of Australia. 
•	There is special association with the National Colonisation Society, the South Australian Association, the Colonisation Commissioners, the South Australian Company, and the Duke of Wellington, Lord Glenelg, Buller, Molesworth, EG Wakefield, Jeremy Bentham, Whitmore, Torrens, Light, Fisher, Gouger and Angas (Royal Geographic Society of South Australia Inc, 2005:6-7). 

The Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc (APPA Inc) stated the following.
•	Historically, the exterior boundaries of the Adelaide Park Lands are the boundaries of the Adelaide City Council that are generally the Adelaide edge of the surrounding road reserve not the centreline, as nominated. Interior boundaries are also considered to be the adjacent road reserve. 
•	Some adjacent Park Land frontage and/or the surrounding road reserves should be included.  
•	The importance of the age and scale of Adelaide Park Lands as a public urban park. 
•	The role in the history of town planning and the importance of the Adelaide plan as a model for 249 of 370 government townships in South Australia and the Northern Territory 
•	Australia's first crematorium was built in West Terrace Cemetery, Australia's oldest cemetery in current use. 
•	The Adelaide Botanic Garden and Botanic Park contains significant heritage features and site of significant events. Victoria Park Grandstands and Adelaide Oval are major features. Victoria Square was the scene of the first flag raising of the Aboriginal flag in Australia. The APPA Inc has identified 52 places within the Adelaide Park Lands which are entered in the RNE and a further 9 places  nominated to the RNE. 
•	Place of possible national significance within the Adelaide Park Lands are Adelaide Oval and Surrounds, Old Grandstand, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens Palm House, Museum of Economic Botany, Bicentennial Conservatory, North Adelaide Railway Station, Adelaide Crematorium, Dardanelles Memorial, Old Mounted Police Barracks. 
•	There are important trees in the Park Lands such as Adelaide’s historic olive groves, the elm trees within the Adelaide Park Lands and Squares, endangered plants in West Terrace Cemetery and the Botanic Gardens are significant. 
•	The Adelaide Park Lands are Adelaide’s defining feature and essentially unique among world cities. Maitland, South Australia is the largest Australian locality apart from Adelaide to have retained a surrounding belt of parkland. Internationally Krakow, Poland is the only city identified to have a complete park belt, which comprises 52 acres or 2.5% of the size of the Adelaide Park Lands. 
•	Adelaide Park Lands, comprising 822 ha (2 030 acres) are the most extensive in Australia, followed by Kings Park, Perth with 400.56 ha (990 acres), Albert Park, Melbourne, 225 ha (556 acres) and Centennial Park, Sydney, 220 ha (543 acres).  Adelaide Park Lands appear to be Australia’s second oldest public park after Sydney’s Hyde Park (1810) (Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc, 2005). 
•	The Adelaide’s Plan, its link to Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City movement and its role in the history of town planning is of international significance. (Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc, 2005). 
•	Adelaide Park Lands is Australia’s most accessible park. With a total perimeter of more than 30kms surrounding the Adelaide CBD the Park Lands are within walking distance or a few minutes drive for most residents of the metropolitan area (Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc, 2005). 
•	The Indigenous Flag designed by Harold Thomas, was first flown at Victoria Square, in Adelaide, on National Aboriginal Day on 12 July 1971.  The flag later became universally recognised as a representation of Aboriginal identity, and its association with many Aboriginal activists and protests, including its long associated with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. 
•	The Pioneers Association of South Australia Inc noted that Colonel William Light had a central and pivotal role in the discovery, exploration, survey and planning for the site of the City of Adelaide and that Deputy Surveyor GS Kingston ‘not be elevated to a position of pre-eminence with the founding of Adelaide’ 

Kathleen Patitsas noted the following:
•	The deliberate planning and laying out of Adelaide at such an early stage differentiate it from other capital cities in Australia (Patitsas:1). 

Professor Johnson noted the following:
•	Kingston should be credited as the principal designer from October 1835 to March 1837 of the city of Adelaide plan and Light and Kingston for the period January to March 1837. Kingston should be credited with the discovery of the site of the city of Adelaide and the rapidity of the town survey (Johnson 2004:11). 
•	The outer perimeter of streets that define the Park Lands are not mentioned (Johnson 2005a:1). 

Kelly Henderson notes:
•	Boundary changes should include the major grid of streets and terraces, within, connecting, adjoining the squares and Park Lands, comprising all lands set apart and dedicated by Light in 1837. 
•	The Park Lands were fundamental to the original design of Adelaide, along with the separation of South and North Adelaide, the location of squares within the urban areas, and the major streets that connected these all of which were dedicated to the provision of freely accessible public walks as undeveloped green open space (Henderson, 2005:1). 
•	Adelaide comprises an authentic preserved cultural landscape which is a tangible representation of a great nineteenth century experiment based on Wakefield’s principles for colonisation and that the Adelaide Park Lands are an integral part of the political, social and cultural development of South Australia's self government (Henderson, 2005:4). 
•	Adelaide Park Lands was purchased in fee simple, as there was no legislative provision of extensive reservation of land for recreation at the time (Henderson, 2005:5-6). 
•	Adelaide Park Lands ‘are recognised as being likely to yield information about the early history of the state by virtue of Indigenous occupation prior to European settlement (including containing burial and battle grounds) and through its several artefact-rich nineteenth century European/Colonial rubbish tips’ (Henderson 2005:7). 
•	Adelaide Park Lands are well recognised as a key exemplar in the international development of town planning (Henderson, 2005:7). 

The South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage has identified over 70 places within the Adelaide Park Lands entered in the State Heritage Register. Most notably these include the institutions along North Terrace, including the Adelaide Railway Station, Old and New Parliament Houses, buildings belonging to the State Library and South Australian Museum, Art Gallery of South Australia, University of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital (Department for Environment and Heritage 2005:1).

(a)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance in the course, or pattern, of Australia’s natural or cultural history;

Nominators' claims against the criterion
1. Adelaide Park Lands are the oldest 'set apart' and 'dedicated' public park lands in the world -15th March, 1837 (Crilly 30 June 2004:1).

2. The first piece of legislation (Section 3 of the 1842 Imperial Waste Lands Act), protecting the 'dedication' of 'places for public recreation and health', arose directly as a result of the reservation/purchase by promissory notes in December 1839 of the Adelaide Park Lands (Crilly 30 June 2004:1).

3. Custodianship was defined in the Adelaide Park Lands, the first (Citizens committee) public Park Lands Trust being proposed on 15th October, 1839; Adelaide was the first City to have public Park Keepers 1839; Adelaide in August 1840 became the first Municipal Corporation in Australia (4th in any British colony), and the first modern Borough government after the passing of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Reform Act, making them the 'conservators' of the City and Park Lands (Crilly 30 June 2004:1).

4. 'The Park Lands initially represented the preservation of the then natural environment,…. From the outset, the Founders of South Australia stipulated that no trees were to be cut down or soil dug up on the Public lands' (Crilly 30 June 2004:6). The nominator suggests that a full biodiversity audit is required to determine the remnant native vegetation and fauna. (A biodiversity audit is not considered necessary to determine National Heritage values against this criterion). 
 
5.'Light's plan of Adelaide and environs, … influenced not only the layout of the 'secondary towns' of South Australia, but town planning around Australia, New Zealand and the world' (Crilly 30 June 2004:6). 
 
6.'The conception of the 'experimental democracy' of South Australia, based on voluntary immigration; the social, political and education reforms of the philosophical radicals; Utilitarian town planning and public health ideas of the 'green spaces' visionaries, led to Adelaide being one of the first pre-planned 'green cities' in the world. The first Constitution of 1834 not only provided for the reservation of open space for the purposes of public health and recreation, but for the protection of all trees on public land' (Crilly 30 June 2004:6). 

The place is considered to have values under this criterion, partially related to the above claims with the exception of Claim 1.  
 
The historic significance of Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout to the nation arises from it marking a turning point in the settlement of Australia.  Prior to the establishment of Adelaide and the colony of SA, Australia consisted of penal settlements such as New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land or military outposts such as Fremantle.
 
The South Australian Association lobbied the British Government to establish a colony of free settlers which would be 'respectable' and self supporting'.  The colony would be a commercial venture based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of systematic colonisation.  Land sales in the new colony would provide free passage for a carefully selected labour force consisting of young adult poor.  The land tenure would be secure so as to attract free settlers and prevent land speculation. 
 
The British Parliament passed the South Australian Colonisation Act in 1834. 
Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is the tangible evidence of the new approach to developing a colony.  The design of Adelaide was a crucial part of British planning for the new colony.  The city was anticipated by its planners and settlers alike to be a new beginning, a city designed in contrast to nineteenth century industrial cities that many of the free settlers had left behind. The British government recognised that the well-organised disposal of land would provide the basis for the planning of Adelaide, in contrast to the other capital cities where the disposal of land had been random and speculative and was reflected in the street planning. It enabled rapid settlement of land, certainty of title, wide streets and abundant public open spaces close to the city
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is outstanding because of the durability of its historical layout.  It reflects the components of a British model of colonial town planning such as a policy of deliberate urbanisation rather than dispersed settlement; the town laid out in advance of settlement; wide streets in geometric form, usually on an area of one square mile; public squares; standard-sized and large rectangular plots; some plots reserved for public use; and a physical distinction between town and country usually by common land or an encircling green belt (Bunker 1998: 249).  The origins of the design of the historic layout, or Adelaide Plan, is contested but usually attributed to Colonel William Light with his deputy George Kingston responsible for undertaking the preparatory work for the plan

Regardless of its authorship the planning was considered visionary for providing substantial and permanent public recreational space easily accessible within walking distance to all city dwellers and visitors long before this was generally recognized in Australia as important to health and amenity. This was a landmark success internationally, as the Adelaide Park Lands provide direct historic evidence of Roebuck and Buckingham, men whose pioneering ideas in considering the health needs of urban populations in the new industrial era, when commons no longer applied (Patitsas:1).

The essence of the Adelaide plan with its grid layout and park lands has survived intact, when many other cities planned in the nineteenth century have been altered beyond recognition. The Light Plan would not have endured if it had not been recognised and protected at an early stage. The role of securing the Park Lands over the past 160 years has been crucial in its preservation. 

The history of the Park Lands demonstrates the vision and commitment of the Adelaide community to preserve the extensive open spaces for public use and recreation. The public has taken an interest in the preservation of the Park Lands with the establishment of the Conservators of the City and Park Lands appointed in 1840, the Park Lands Preservation Society in 1903, followed by its successor, the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association.

The nominator’s claim that the Adelaide Park Lands, 'set apart' and 'dedicated' on 15th March 1837 and paid for by the Emigration Fund, are the earliest extensive public park lands in Britain and its colonies, is acknowledged but evidence does not clearly support the claim.  Hyde Park, Sydney was the earliest public park in Australia being formally reserved as a public park in 1810 (Proudfoot in Aitkin & Looker 2002 p.323). In the established towns and cities of England and other countries of Europe public parks were developed on poor land or took advantage of former defensive sites.  

Australia provided opportunities for new towns to set aside land for public parks for recreational and public amenity uses in prime locations. 
 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout has outstanding heritage value to the nation against criterion (a).

(b)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s possession of uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of Australia’s natural or cultural history;
Nominators' claims against Criterion (b)
1.      The public of South Australia would be more impressed to know how the native species of the Park Lands have been threatened and decimated by car races and other major events in our park lands. Without an independent Park Lands Trust Charter to protect and monitor them as one entity, there is little chance of any regeneration 'strategy' or tree planting project being successful in the long term (Crilly 30 June 2004:7). 
2.      The original design of the City of Adelaide imposed a clear imprint on the natural landscape. This imprint has endured, as a recognisable historical layout, until the present day. The City of Adelaide (historic layout) is evident in the landscape that embodies and expresses the concept of the plan for the City, surveyed in 1836-37, and comprises the Park Lands, the layout of six town squares and the hierarchical grid of roads. The durability and intactness of the plan of Adelaide is testament to its success and is unique in this country’ (City of Adelaide 2005).
3.      The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is historically significant as a planned early nineteenth century city that remains substantially intact. Formally planned and laid out prior to settlement, its grid pattern, wide streets and town squares conform to established planning conventions for new towns at this time in the English-speaking world. It also reflects contemporary ideas about the provision of common or reserved land for its aesthetic qualities and public health and recreation. The systematic approach taken is unequalled by any other colonial settlement in the country (City of Adelaide 2005).
4.      The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands was used as a model for a number of other settlements, including numerous towns in South Australia and New Zealand. The plan also influenced the Garden City planning movement during the early twentieth century’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 
5.      The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is important for its rarity, as Adelaide is the only capital city in Australia to be enclosed by a continuous belt of Park Lands. The Park Lands comprise over 700 hectares, a huge land area which remains substantially intact since its establishment (City of Adelaide 2005). 

Claims 2, 3, and 5 are supported.  Claim 1 is not framed as a claim of significance.  Claim 4 is addressed under Criterion a) and f).

City Futures Research Centre (2007 p 186) in their assessment noted that the Adelaide Plan provides a unique or rare demonstration of a planning philosophy, theory or technique in a particular era of the nation's development.  The report further stated that while the town plan based on the grid is common in Australia, Adelaide's plan is unique in its scale, complexity and subtlety.  In terms of rarity, Adelaide is the only Australian capital city to be completely enclosed by parklands, and they are also the most extensive, comprising 693 hectares in total. This is supported by the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc which noted that the Adelaide Park Lands are Adelaide’s defining feature and essentially unique among world cities. It asserts that Maitland, South Australia is the largest Australian locality apart from Adelaide to have retained a surrounding belt of parkland. The "Planty", a green belt surrounding Krakow,Poland, was established in place of the city walls which had been pulled down in the eighteenth century (Krakow History, 2005). Internationally, Krakow,  is the only city identified to have a complete park belt, which comprises 52 acres or 2.5% of the size of the Adelaide Park Lands. 

Freestone has assessed that the most significant Australian influence on garden city thought in the nineteenth century was the ‘distinctive’ 1837 town plan of Adelaide (Freestone 1989:57).  
 
The Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc considers that Adelaide’s Park Lands are unique, being Adelaide’s defining feature. It also claims that the Adelaide Park Lands, comprising 822 ha (2 030 acres) are the most extensive in Australia, followed by Kings Park, Perth with 400.56 ha (990 acres), Albert Park, Melbourne, 225 ha (556 acres) and Centennial Park, Sydney, 220 ha (543 acres) (Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association Inc, 2005). 

‘The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is important for its rarity, as Adelaide is the only capital city in Australia to be enclosed by a continuous belt of Park Lands. The Park Lands comprise over 700 hectares, a huge land area which remains substantially intact since its establishment’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 

Freestone considers that 'the major achievement of the nineteenth century was the reservation of large tracts of open space for commons, public domains, botanic gardens and government farms'.  He considers Adelaide Park Lands as the most memorable and still substantially intact.  (Freestone, ‘Town Planning’ in Aitken and Looker, 2002:600).

Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is unique demonstration of a planning philosophy. While there has been some encroachment by development, the Adelaide Park Lands which comprise over 700 hectares, remains substantially intact since its establishment.  The reservation of such an expanse of open space is rare for a major urban centre and testifies to the durability of the plan of the city.  

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout may have outstanding heritage value to the nation against criterion (b).

(c) The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Australia’s natural or cultural history;
 
Nominator's claims against Criterion (c) 
1.	Some examples may be Gould on birds, finding a new species of parrot on the River Torrens (1841); Grey, for discovering fossils (1843), McLaren, eucalypts of the Adelaide Plains; Menge, geology, Williams/Wyatt, vocabularies of the Adelaide tribes and artefacts; Sturt, natural history; Stevenson, horticulture; Teichelmann and Moorehouse, the Aborigines of South Australia; Bailey, first plantings in the Botanic Gardens, origins of grape vines, olive trees; Perkins, the first decade of agriculture; Arbor Day plantings; Wattle Grove etc (Crilly 30 June 2004:8). 

With the dramatic and rapid changes since European settlement little remains of the past Aboriginal landscape. Ellis (1976) noted that the remaining evidence of past Aboriginal occupation is a small number of scarred trees, occupational sites, quarrying sites, cultural sites, human remains and stone artefacts.  

While there is a small chance the Adelaide Park Lands will yield information about Indigenous occupation prior to European settlement, it is highly unlikely that this information would significantly change or enhance the understanding of Indigenous occupation in this region.

Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout does not meet threshold for Criterion (c).

(d)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of:
 (i) a class of Australia’s natural or cultural places; or
(ii) a class of Australia’s natural or cultural environments;

Nominator's claims against Criterion (d)
1.      The Historic Layout was used. ‘Adelaide as a pre-planned ‘green towne’, was influenced by Owen, Penn, Roebuck, Gait, Sharp, Maslen, Buckingham, Hume, Repton, Loudon, amongst many others. The ‘belt of park lands’ encircling the City of Adelaide is the first practical application of Roebuck’s vision of ‘land for the purpose of laying out parks’, first advocated in 1828. Light also reserved out of the park lands a Botanic garden, a Hospital, the Racecourse, the Market Place and Public Cemetery. Light’s ‘circular’ design of the cemetery may also be significant. The Commissioners of South Australia made provision in Light’s Instructions for the reservation of other public land along all of our coastline and along waterways, to protect against water frontage monopoly. The six squares are based on William Penn’s Philadelphia, but individually laid out with public walks designed by Colonel Light. The idea of public walks had been introduced by Slaney’s Select Committee of 1833, but Light’s linear park around the Torrens River within the city limits, is the first application of town planning concepts for landscape and water views (Crilly, 30 June 2004:9).
2.           The nominator claims that ‘Light’s genius is in how his city and environs Plan adapted to best advantage the major communications between the capital city, the ports and the country districts  by utilising the natural resources of the land. The Plans of the Secondary Towns, each with their own squares and parks, and surrounded by pastoral lands, were to be satellite self-supporting communities interconnected to the capital city and seat of government (Crilly, 30 June 2004:9).
 
Claims 1 and 2 partly support the value, however, the claim that the six squares are based on William Penn’s Philadelphia has not been established. There is insufficient evidence to support the claim that Light’s linear park around the Torrens River within the city limits is the first application of town planning concepts for landscape and water views is the first in Australia, or internationally. The claim that the first crematorium in Australia was built in West Terrace Cemetery is a fact but not a value relevant to the place. 

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is considered an exemplar of a nineteenth century planned urban centre. 

Civic design in the Nineteenth Century was based on a grid pattern, with wide streets, large rectangular blocks, public squares, open spaces and definitive boundary. The grid design was popular as it allowed controlled settlement and certainty of tenure.  Governor Macquarie laid out his towns using the grid pattern and the City Futures Study notes that 'Within the grid, the aim was to give a frontage on the main streets to as many allotments as possible. But there was little realistic appreciation of long-term growth potential and needs in the modern sense. The grid plan was sometimes displaced from alignment to the cardinal compass points (north-south-east-west) to make the best use of site and situation, but frequently the process was arbitrary with little sympathetic response to the nature of the site' (City Futures 2007 Vol.1 p.22). 

What sets Adelaide apart is that it was developed to take advantage of the natural benefits of the site.  The Atlas of South Australia notes 'What makes Adelaide unique among many thousands of grid  pattern towns founded in the nineteenth century was a sensitive adjustment of street grids to variations in terrain, the wide streets and the surrounding girdle of parkland' (www.atlas.sa.gov.au/go/resources/atlas-of-south-australia-1986).

The authors of the Urban and Town Planning thematic Heritage Study (2007) claim that the Adelaide Plan is an exemplar, providing the most complete example in Australia of the ‘grand modell’ of colonial town planning. (City Futures 2007 Vol 2 p.186). This view is supported by Proudfoot who considers that ‘Adelaide had a ‘model plan’ devised by Colonel Light that has been hailed since as the epitome of the ‘Grand Modell’, an influence on Ebenezer Howard and the garden city movement, and Australia’s best textbook plan’ (Proudfoot 2000).

The influence of the Adelaide Plan on the Garden City Movement is noted by many town planning historians with Ebenezer Howard also referring to its qualities in his seminal work 'Cities of Tomorrow'.  The Garden City movement is regarded as one of the most profound town planning initiatives of the Twentieth Century. 

Freestone noted that in the twentieth century public open spaces became systematically included into city planning processes and city structures. The principal characteristics of nineteenth century park lands was the reservation of large tracts of open space for commons, public domains, botanic gardens and government farms to fulfil public use and recreation functions. The establishment of such reserves were based on contemporary social, moral, economic and political views. Freestone considered the Adelaide Park Lands to be ‘the most memorable and still substantially intact’ of the nineteenth century examples (Freestone, 2002:600). 

The establishment of large scale public reserves reflected innovative contemporary nineteenth century social, moral, economic and political values and attitudes resulting from social conditions in congested industrialised cities in Britain. The Adelaide Park Lands demonstrates the principal characteristics of a class of public reserves, an element in the development of towns and cities, and significant for its role in the development of town planning. 

The success of the park land model in the nineteenth century was demonstrated by its use for other settlements, including numerous towns in South Australia and New Zealand. 

The Adelaide Park Lands have been used as Aboriginal meeting places and camping in ways representative of an Aboriginal fringe dwelling pattern. However, there are many other areas in Australian cities and towns that have a similar significance. There is no evidence to suggest that the Adelaide parklands stand out from the many other places which have similar significance.

Adelaide Park Lands and City layout is significant for demonstrating the principal characteristics of a nineteenth century city designed on garden city principles. 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout may have outstanding heritage value to the nation against Criterion (d).

(e) The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic characteristics valued by a community or cultural group;

Nominators' claims against Criterion (e)
1.    Kath Crilly cites comments (1837-1839) to support the claim that the settlers valued the site of the future town of Adelaide and its setting as beautiful or picturesque.
1.	Professor John Reps who wrote, ‘One feature of the model town described by Maslen may have influenced the real world of Australian planning. This was his proposed permanent belt of open or park land surrounding the model city—a feature of the plan for Adelaide, the pioneer European settlement in South Australia, surveyed only seven years later’. The Park Lands provided a model for the selection of land in secondary towns, which restricted access to water, and was unique to South Australia (Crilly 30 June, 2004:10). 
2.	The place ‘is important for its aesthetic values which are maximised by innovative design. The journey into the City is renowned for its beauty and contrast as one passes through the belt of Park Lands into the urban centre. The wide city streets maximise views: to the Adelaide Hills, the Park Lands and Squares, and from many vantage points across the Park Lands, such as Light's Vision at Montefiore Hill’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 
 
Documentary sources make it clear that the Adelaide City Layout and the Park Lands were adapted to take advantage of the topography of the site selected for the future city. Early settlers’ comments demonstrate that they valued the city’s site and its setting for beautiful or picturesque qualities. The Adelaide city layout with its belt of park lands used innovative design taking advantage of the topography to reinforce the urban design elements and provide aesthetically pleasing views and vistas.

Views and vistas into and from the city are maximised by the innovative design of the Park Lands and the city layout with its six squares. The Park Lands are visible from many parts of the City and North Adelaide and form end points for vistas through the City streets. They contribute to important views out of the City, together with the distant views of the Adelaide Hills in the background, as well as providing important views into the City. The journey into or from the City provides contrast as one passes through the belt of Park Lands which form a transition zone between the urban centre and the surrounding suburbs. The wide city streets maximise views to the Adelaide Hills, the Park Lands and Squares, and from many vantage points across the Park Lands, such as Light's Vision at Montefiore Hill.

The Adelaide City Council’s website supported the gazettal of the City of Adelaide Historic Layout in the Register of the National Estate in 2001 (http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com). The statement of significance does not address criterion (e). The RNE statement of significance for the Adelaide Park Lands found that the Park Lands are highly valued for their aesthetic qualities, stating that the Park Lands ‘provide an attractive contrast to the surrounding urban environment and provide a number of important views, especially from Light’s Vision on Montefiore Hill’ (Data base no:102551 (http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com). 

Although the Park Lands are highly regarded for aesthetic qualities by the Adelaide community, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the Adelaide Park Lands and Historic Layout are sufficiently valued at a national level to meet threshold for national heritage values.  

There is no evidence to suggest that Adelaide Parklands exhibit particular aesthetic characteristics valued by Indigenous Australians. 

The Adelaide Parklands and City Layout does not meet threshold for national heritage values under Criterion (e).

(f)The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period;

Nominators' claims against Criterion (f) 
1.    The nominator cites respected sources to support the claim that the Adelaide plan exhibits a high degree of creative or technical achievement.            
1.	Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is renowned for its design excellence, with its inspired use of the River Torrens and its valley, and sensitive response to the topography of the northern and eastern sections of the City (City of Adelaide 2005). 
2.	Light was the first surveyor in the world to use a trigonometrical survey for cadastral purposes (i.e. to fix property boundaries). According to Ms Crilly, in terms of ‘its trigonometrical survey, coordinated cadastre and registration of title to land ownership, South Australia has the best land definition system in the world and is now selling its expertise to other parts of the world’ (Crilly 30th June, 2004: 11). 
 
The Plan of Adelaide demonstrates innovation in conception design and implementation. The Adelaide plan is an exemplar, providing the most complete example in Australia of colonial town planning. The innovation lies in successfully melding many ideas, instructions and influences into a complete scheme. Adelaide was laid out within a well articulated set of instructions and Light was responsible for carrying them out. However, these instructions were off-hand about the form the city should take. The selection of the site and the laying out of the city were the outcomes of this process and provide a distinctive example of well integrated planning. Elements of the Adelaide Plan are also noted for their design excellence, particularly the use of the Torrens valley, the sensitive response to the topography in North Adelaide and the eastern part of South Adelaide, and the extensive parklands (City Futures 2007 Vol. 2. p.186). 

The study by City Futures (2007 Vol. 2. p.187) notes how Adelaide is the most complete example of this model, a colonial town model with desirable characteristics that was reflected in foundations in North and South America, Australia and elsewhere as well as being used in founding many other towns in Australia and New Zealand, and cited as an exemplar in later seminal planning texts including Garden Cities of Tomorrow by Ebenezer Howard.  This is supported in the entry for Light in the Oxford Companion to Australian History that noted that ‘Adelaide gained world renown in the history of town planning for the grid design and large areas of parkland that were regular but sensitive to the natural contours of the area’ (Toole 1998:392).

Light’s trigonometrical land boundary survey and the Adelaide plan are still closely reflected in the geometry of the city, as well as the surrounding metropolitan area, and few changes in fundamental alignments have been made since 1838. There is substantial historical documentation of this work and the plan, including surveyor’s field notes with evidence of survey instructions issued by Light; a letter written by Light in May 1837 includes a sketch showing the site of Adelaide and details of the surrounding land (obtained by the State Library of SA in 2005); and there is the Adelaide plan itself (City Futures 2007 Vol 2. p.187). 

Many aspects of the Adelaide Plan indicate that Light was innovative in the plan reflecting the topography of the area. The Park Lands encompass the River Torrens and its valley and encircle the City, which basically lies on a flat plain with North Adelaide sited on higher ground with a segment of the city angled to the slope of the land. The Adelaide Hills can be seen in the distance from many locations despite their relative distance from the City. The wide streets of the Light Plan allow maximum advantage to be taken of the views to the Hills which can be seen through many of the east-west streets in North Adelaide, such as Strangways Terrace, Ward Street, Barnard Street, Archer Street, Molesworth Street and Tynte Street.  Most east-west streets in the City take advantage of views to the Hills in the distance. In many instances these distant views are enhanced by foreground views over the Park Lands. Magnificent views over the Park Lands to the Adelaide Hills can be seen from Lefevre Terrace and Medindie Road. 

Numerous streets in North Adelaide have been designed to take advantage of Park Lands frontages. Particularly in upper North Adelaide, this prestigious residential area boasts many large houses overlooking Park Lands, such as Lefevre Terrace, Kingston Terrace, Brougham Place, Palmer Place, Strangways Terrace and Mills Terrace. Churches have also been strategically placed in North Adelaide to contribute to striking views, such as Christ Church in Palmer Place, Brougham Place Church at Brougham Place, and St Peter’s Cathedral on King William Road. 

Views down from North Adelaide over the Park Lands towards the Torrens River valley are also noteworthy. The variation in the character of the Park Lands also adds interest to views throughout the City and North Adelaide. For instance, the Park Lands near War Memorial Drive are primarily sporting grounds, whereas near the Torrens River, there tend to be more formal gardens, and the Park Lands north of North Adelaide have a more rural character.

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout has high innovation in conception design and implementation in bringing together a complete scheme expressed in its distinctive urban form.  It is an outstanding nineteenth century achievement. 

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout may have outstanding heritage value to the nation against Criterion (f).

(g)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons;

Claims against Criterion (g)
1.	The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is important to many South Australians who have a strong attachment to the original layout of the City and Park Lands in particular. It is also highly regarded nationally by historians and town planners, and by local community groups such as the Adelaide Preservation Association’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 
 
The Adelaide Park Lands has longstanding social significance and has a history of community involvement in its care and safeguarding of its values dating from the earliest time. It includes the Park Lands Defence Association (1869-87), the Park Lands Preservation League (1903, 1948), the Park Lands Preservation Society and the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association, which continues to operate as a community-based, non-profit organisation dedicated to the protection and preservation of the unique parklands encircling the city of Adelaide (http://www.adelaide-parklands.org/). The community has continued to protest about development encroachment into the Park Lands as awareness of the significance of preservation of open space and community lands has heightened. 

Despite the actions of government and council in encroaching on the parklands and squares, members of successive British and South Australian governments, and of the Adelaide City Council, have also acted as vigorous perpetuators and defenders of the Plan from as early as 1838. Kingston himself, as a later Member of Parliament, denied the right of the government to interfere with the Park Lands ‘dedicated’ by Light (City Futures 2007 pp.187-188). Public pressure over management of the parklands brought passage of the Adelaide Park Lands Act 2005, which established a new Adelaide Park Lands Authority (City Futures 2007 pp.187-188). The Authority is chaired by the Mayor of Adelaide.

The social value of the Park Lands was ascertained as part of the nomination by the Adelaide City Council for inclusion in the Register of the National Estate in 2001.  It was found that Adelaide Park Lands was highly valued as a place for recreation and community activities.  However, further work undertaken by Donovan and Associates (1998) in their report The Cultural Significance of Adelaide Park Lands found that the social and cultural significance of the Park Lands was greater than just amenity.  Donovan found that ‘many of the respondents to the questionnaire valued the Park Lands for what they are, rather than what they have been or contained'.  They were not concerned simply with the amenity value of the Park Lands, as providing space for recreation and other activities, rather they considered the Park Lands fundamental to the character and ambience of the city (Donovan and Associates 1998:2).  The signifcance of the Park Lands as a defining aspect of Adelaide’s special character informs the Park Lands Management Strategy (Hassall 1999).

The Park Lands might have particular significance to the Kaurna as part of their traditional lands, and for the Kaurna and other Aboriginal people who have gathered and camped there on the fringes of Adelaide. However, there is no evidence that the Kaurna or other Aboriginal association with the Park Land is of outstanding significance to the nation.

There is adequate evidence demonstrating the input of community groups in shaping  major planning outcomes of Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout.  The strength of their attachment is demonstrated by the continuity of community care and their actions in safeguarding the plan for over 169 years. 

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout may have outstanding heritage value to the nation against Criterion (g).

(h)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in Australia’s natural or cultural history;
 
Claims against Criterion (h)
1.	The following people, ideas, schemes and legislation should be considered: green Spaces Visionaries, public health pioneers, philosophic radicals, parliamentary reforms, political reformers, immigration schemes, New Town planning, experimental democracy, no state aid to religion, municipal reform, public cemeteries, libraries, botanical gardens, the Real Property Act, the Register of Births Deaths & Marriages, new surveying equipment, landscape design, protection of the natural environment, protection of water supply, the Park Lands Trust, the National Colonization Society, the Colonial Society, the South Australian Association, the South Australian Literary & Scientific Association, the Aboriginal Protection Society, Owen, Penn, Maslen, Slaney, Roebuck, Buckingham, Gait, Loudon, Bentham, Colonel Light, Fisher, Gouger, Wakefield, Torrens, Higgins (Crilly, 30 June 2005). 
2.	‘The City of Adelaide Historic Layout and Park Lands is important for its association with its surveyor Colonel William Light, and is regarded as his most notable work. It is also associated with the Board of Colonisation Commissioners, which was responsible for its development. Colonel Light is nationally recognised as being responsible for the Plan of Adelaide’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 
 
Claim 1 is regarded as below threshold since the connection of the aforementioned people and groups with the place is not regarded as of outstanding importance to the nation.  The contribution of most of these people is more suitable to be recognised at the State level.  

In relation to Claim 2, the evidence provided in the nominations and from other sources strongly indicate that Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is important for its surveyor, Colonial William Light.
 
According to the Urban and Town Planning Thematic Study, Colonial William Light is the man most famously identified with the Adelaide Plan and he bore the ultimate responsibility as recorded in his surviving publications and letters (City Futures 2007, p188).  On his death in 1839, Light was buried in one of Adelaide’s city squares, named after him, 'Light Square'.  The statue which was also erected by a grateful citizenry was later moved to its present site, 'Light’s vision', overlooking the city from Montefiore Hill in the Park Lands in North Adelaide.
 
Elder in the Australian Dictionary of Biography attributes to Light the belt of park lands which he considers ‘a feature of town planning ahead of the times’ (Elder 1967: 118).
 
The role played by Light in the preparation of the plan for the City of Adelaide and its surrounding Park Lands is, however, contested.  Langmead in the Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens attributes the Adelaide Plan with its terraces, squares and surrounding parklands to Light’s deputy, George Kingston in 1835 (Aitken and Looker 2002:347).  Johnson also claims that Kingston discovered and proposed the site for the city of Adelaide and played the most important role in 'strategic, management, practical, and survey matters (1834-37) for the establishment of South Australia' (Johnson 2004:14).
 
It is recognised that George Kingston did play a role in the Adelaide Pan.  He appears to have undertaken the preparatory work in establishing the plan, while Light as Surveyor-General has been credited with the Plan.  While Kingston is significant to South Australia for his contribution to the Light Plan, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the association is of outstanding national significance.
 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is also associated with Edward Gibbon Wakefield as a manifestation of his theory of systematic colonisation.  This planning theory, however, is only one of several contemporary ideas that influenced the Adelaide Plan.  His association with the place is not regarded as being of outstanding national significant.  
 
Sir Robert Richard Torrens is internationally renowned for his introduction of the Torrens Title but it can be argued that it was the SA land speculation and haphazard grant system that influenced the development of his land title system, rather than a strong association with Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout.  Torrens could perhaps be more strongly associated with the South Australian Parliament.
 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout may have outstanding value to the nation against Criterion (h).

(i)  The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place’s importance as part of Indigenous tradition;
 
Claims against Criterion (i)
1.	The Adelaide Park Lands was nominated against this criterion. The nominator suggests that historical and cultural task forces be set up to evaluate potential values. It is not considered necessary to establish task forces to determine whether the place has values under this criterion. 
2.	The nominator claims that the place ‘it is part of what is known to the Kaurna people as the Red Kangaroo Dreaming Place. Upon European settlement, these places assumed significance as the only places available for use by the Kaurna people and many activities associated with Indigenous use occurred in these areas, such as ceremonies, meetings, trade, camping, hunting and burials’ (City of Adelaide 2005). 
3.	The Adelaide Parklands area is significant to Kaurna as part of their traditional lands.  Within the parklands:
On the land now occupied by Victoria Square, the Tarndanya (Red Kangaroo Dreaming) people are recorded as having gathered for special ceremonies and dances long before Colonel Light planned the city or the parkland.  

The Botanical Gardens is significant for the Kaurna and other Aboriginal people because of the associations it has and is the site of activities that continue their occupancy of the land. 

The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout remain significant to Aboriginal people at a local and regional level, particularly to the Kaurna as part of their traditional lands.  However, this significance either is not within Indigenous tradition or it is similar to the significance that other lands have for other Aboriginal communities.

The Adelaide Parklands does not meet threshold for national heritage values against Criterion (i)
 
History:
 
Background 
At the time of settlement, the Adelaide Plains were occupied by Kaurna people, (whose descendants continue to maintain connections with their traditional lands).   In part the landscape was the result of Aboriginal occupation, which included seasonally burning of the land to reduce undergrowth and regenerate plant growth.  The natural ecosystems which made up the country prior to European settlement were swamp, woodland, mallee, grasslands and forests.  European settlers were attracted to the Adelaide plains, according to Ellis (1976: 7) because of its lightly-timbered open grassland which resembled the English countryside. 

The colony of South Australia was founded in 1836, after the colonies of New South Wales, Western Australia and Tasmania had been established. Unlike the other colonies, South Australia was not established as penal settlement, but rather as a commercial venture. Established fifty years after the colony of New South Wales, the colonisation of South Australia was carefully considered by the British government. 

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was concerned about the instability that land speculation and social problems had caused in these earlier settlements, and sought to find the right conditions for the success of new colonies. Wakefield developed his theory of systematic colonisation, believing that careful planning would provide a balance between land, capital and labour and thus the conditions for economic and social stability.  He promoted the establishment of South Australia as a model colony that would be settled on this basis. 

In 1834, Wakefield’s ideas were partially realised when legislation was passed that provided for the establishment of South Australia.  The colony would be overseen by the British Government through the Colonial Office, but with land, emigration, labour and population matters managed by a Board of Colonisation Commissioners. The South Australian Company was established in 1835 to expedite the sale of land in the colony, and much of the colony of South Australia had been planned, advertised and sold before the colony was settled. 

The Board of Colonisation Commissioners was formed in May 1835. GS Kingston (1807-1880), civil engineer, architect and later politician, was employed as Deputy Surveyor. The Commissioners appointed Colonel William Light (1786-1839) as Surveyor-General early in 1836.  He had experience in ‘infantry, cavalry, navy, surveying, sketching and [an] interest in cities’ and had initially been recommended for the position of Governor of South Australia.   BT Finniss (1807-1893) and H Nixon were also employed with Kingston as surveying staff, and they arrived in South Australia in August 1836. 

The Commissioners gave Light sole responsibility for choosing the site of the colony’s first town and clear instructions about its planning:

‘When you have determined the site of the first town you will proceed to lay it out in accordance with the Regulations…’ and ‘you will make the streets of ample width, and arrange them with reference to the convenience of the inhabitants, and the beauty and salubrity of the town; and you will make the necessary reserves for squares, public walks and quays’ (Johnson 2004:12-13).

The Commissioners also directed Light to ‘look to any new town precedent in America and Canada’ for guidance.  The grid plan was by then an established planning convention for colonial new towns in the English-speaking world.  It probably had its origins in Roman military camps, and was first used by the English for fortified towns or bastides during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the grid pattern making it easy to collect property taxes. The grid plan was later evident in the plans developed for colonial new towns.  Many of the new towns established in Upper Canada and in the southern colonies of North America in the eighteenth century had gridded plans and one or more town squares. William Penn’s Philadelphia (1687) was followed by Charleston (1672). In Savannah (1733), and a number of other towns in Georgia, a belt of encircling parkland was also provided. Savannah was laid out by social reformer Oglethorpe who influenced Granville Sharp, a British anti-slavery campaigner and utopian who attempted to establish model towns for freed slaves in which he promoted the benefits of the grid and greenbelt (The Adelaide Review 2004:2).

In around 1789, the Governor-General of Canada, Lord Dorchester, developed a model town plan for use by surveyors in Upper Canada, probably with the assistance of Captain Gother Mann, a commander of the Royal Engineers in Upper Canada.  The model for inland sites was one-mile square, with regularly spaced roads and one-acre lots.  It was encircled by a belt of reserved land that provided a barrier between the township and surrounding farm lots.

In 1788, Mann prepared a plan for Toronto, in which the town would be one mile square, with a gridded system of streets, five symmetrically positioned squares and a sixth square that opened to the waterfront.  As with Dorchester’s model, it was provided with a belt of reserved land.  This plan, which was not actually used for Toronto, has been described as ‘a blueprint for successive new towns in Canada, Australia and New Zealand’.

In the 1790s, the newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Colonel John Graves Simcoe, promoted the use of Dorchester’s and Mann’s town designs, including the ‘park belt’ idea, as a model for the surveying of Upper Canada.  It has been argued that the use of common or reserved land for ‘enclosure and separation’ became an established planning convention during this period.

A number of model plans for new towns were also developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with provision for a belt of parklands around the town. In 1794, a model plan was developed by the English social reformer Granville Sharp, outlined in A General Plan for Laying Out Townships on the New Acquired Lands in the East Indies, America, or Elsewhere.  It had a gridded road pattern, a central square and a strip of common land that surrounded the town lots.

In 1830, retired English naval officer Allen Gardiner published Friend of Australia under the name of TJ Maslen, outlining his idea of a model town for the Australian colonies. He suggested that ‘a park [should] surround every town, like a belt one mile in width’ and that ‘all entrances to every town should be through a park, that is to say a belt of park of about a mile or two in diameter, should entirely surround every town, save and excepting such sides as are washed by a river or lake’. He included the parklands for health, recreation and aesthetic reasons.

In 1833 the House of Commons Select Committee considered 'the best means of securing Open Spaces in the vicinity of Populous Towns, as Public Walks and Places of exercise' …to study 'the relationship between general health in densely populated towns and the psychological and recreational value of public open spaces' (Johnson 2004). The report found that there was a need for more open spaces in cities, and that ‘during the last half century many enclosures of open spaces in the vicinity of towns have taken place and little or no provision has been made for public walks or open spaces, fitted to afford means of exercise of amusement to the middle and humbler classes’. Reformers like John Arthur Roebuck campaigned against the enclosure of traditional commons and argued that towns should be provided with parks and gardens for ‘health and recreational purposes’. 

The Board of Colonisation Commissioners were possibly influenced by the social utopian and utilitarian ideas of Robert Owen and Jeremy Bentham.  Wakefield and Bentham had collaborated in developing ideas for the colonisation of South Australia, and Bentham advocated a ‘principle of spatial containment and concentration with social and economic control’.  Around ten years before the settlement of South Australia, Owen wrote about his ideas for self-supporting cooperative communities or ‘villages of unity and mutual cooperation’.  The idea was essentially for a ‘town in a building set in open space’ and was similar to Bentham’s ‘industry-house establishment’.  In both instances, spatial elements would shape and control the social relations within the town. 

The Adelaide Park Lands may have been provided as a form of enclosure that would concentrate the population in the City and control the supply and value of land, ideas that could have been derived from the work of Wakefield and Bentham. It has also been argued that South Australia’s planners sought to control social relations by utilising a town layout that maximised the visibility of the population and encouraged people to form small social groups within well-defined areas. Possibly it was used as a form of concentric zoning that was intended to shape economic and social relationships. Providing democratic access to public lands for health and recreation were other reasons. It has also been suggested that the park belt was intended to provide protection from a perceived threat of attack by Aborigines. 
 
Social and economic context
The study by City Futures Research Centre (2007: p.183) notes that the design of Adelaide was a crucial part of British planning for the new colony of South Australia as a self-supporting land settlement, and the city’s plan forms the most enduring and tangible evidence of that colonial experiment. South Australia was the last of the colonies to be settled and was intended as a free settlement. British intentions for establishing South Australia were different to those for New South Wales and Western Australia. 
 
The colony was founded by British legislation in 1834. Control of all the land was delegated to a Board of Colonization Commissioners with proceeds from the sale of land to be put towards an Emigration Fund. This new approach to planting a colony applied the Wakefield principles of systematic colonisation, concerning land, labour and capital. Instead of granting free land to settlers, land was to be sold, and the proceeds used to fund the emigration of free settlers (labourers) to the colony. The scheme involved advanced planning, and controlled land survey before settlement. The new city (named by royal request after Queen Adelaide) was planned as ‘bait’ to attract capitalist investors by purchase of cheap city sections, while the generous layout also reflected the aspirations of British reformers, and their hopes of developing a new, more civilized, social order in Australia (City Futures 2007 p. 183).   
 
In 1836, the Commissioners appointed Colonel William Light as Surveyor General, and instructed him to select the site and plan the new capital. Light’s plan of 1837 included nine ‘Government Reserves’, and indicated the likely future routes of roads through an encircling belt of parklands to the port and country lands. Other areas of the parklands have also since been alienated for uses including new street alignments, railways and public and recreational buildings, but most of these functions have played significant roles in the historical development of South Australia, and in terms of the Adelaide Plan, they have maintained, or increased, the intended public use of the parklands and squares (City Futures 2007 p. 183).   
 
Planning history
The Garden City Movement had a profound effect on town planning in the early twentieth century. Social reformer Ebenezer Howard had referred to the Adelaide Park Lands in his influential book Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902). Munford believed that Howard had introduced the Greek concept of colonisation by fully equipped communities, in line with the views of social reformers like Robert  Owen and Edward Wakefield (Mumford 1961:586). The London based Garden City Association advanced Howard’s ideas as a model for city planning and organisation. The City Beautiful movement promoted the creation of new parks, boulevards and street beautification by linking aesthetics with growth. The Garden City movement endorsed garden suburbs with generous open spaces amongst other characteristics. Influenced by Howard, the ideology of civic beautification started to develop at the start of the twentieth century in Australia (Sulman 1919). 
 
Reflecting the significance of the Adelaide Plan, there has been intense debate both about the plan’s origins, and its planners. The principal role of South Australia’s first Surveyor General, Colonel William Light, has been affirmed, with acknowledgement of major contributions by George Strickland Kingston. Light, as instructed, looked at other examples of the planting of towns of this kind for ideas about its layout, and several sources can be identified. The South Australian Colonization Commission in London appointed Kingston Assistant Surveyor in 1835, and he supervised preparation of a preliminary ‘Plan of Town’ by other surveying staff, Boyle Travers Finniss and Edward O’Brien. This notional plan was used to raise funds for the new colony through ‘preliminary purchases’ of town acres (City Futures 2007 pp. 183-184). 
 
Light was appointed Surveyor General in 1836, and departed in that year with a group of surveyors, including Kingston and Finniss. They were sent ahead of the first settlers to locate and lay out the new capital and survey the surrounding country lands in advance of other development. Light was given clear responsibility for selecting the site, but little was said in his instructions about the plan except that it was to be spacious, with wide streets, squares and public reserves, and in accordance with ‘Regulations for the preliminary sales of colonial lands in the country’. These included the requirement of creating a town of 1,000 one-acre lots (the final total, including the squares and places, was 1,042), and these Town Acres are still recognized by the city’s planners (City Futures 2007 p. 184).
 
The choice of site was critical, and was done only after careful reconnaissance. Light’s selection of the site of the capital city and seat of government was decided in December 1836, and the city was laid out in January-March 1837 with opportunism informing the placement of the layout on the landscape. Light reserved encircling ‘Park Lands’ on his Map of ‘The Port And Town of Adelaide’ (1837) which also delineated nine Government Reserves on the parklands. Two of these, the Government Domain (including the present site of Government House), and the (West Terrace) Cemetery were used as designated, and remain in those locations today, forming significant elements of the surviving Adelaide Plan. Another Government Reserve was indicated for a Botanic Gardens. Although these were established elsewhere in the parklands, they represent another feature of the original Adelaide Plan, as well as a significant designed element in their own right, dating from the preparation of the first botanic gardens plan (1850s) for Australia (City Futures 2007 p.184).  
 
With a gridiron street pattern, systemic provision of town squares, and defining parkland, the 1837 city plan of Adelaide combined numerous physical planning ideas and innovations of the colonial era. Many influences have been identified, from ancient Roman camps to ideal city plans such as William Penn’s Philadelphia and James Oglethorpe’s Savannah, as well as more abstract models including Granville Sharp’s ideal township of 1794 and T.J. Maslen’s ideal town in his The Friend of Australia (1830). Most of the Adelaide Plan’s elements were not novel but their arrangement on the ground was an inspired response to site and opportunity, and represented the culmination of the whole colonial planning movement of the time (City Futures 2007 p. 184).  
 
The Adelaide plan, with its three layers of town land, parkland and suburban land, was later used as a model for many of the towns surveyed in South Australia, such as Gawler, Mylor and Alawoona, and the Northern Territory, particularly between 1864 and 1919.  The government had a substantial role in creating and planning South Australia’s towns, unlike the other Australian colonies where speculative development led to more varied results. South Australia’s surveyors provided some parkland in around half of the towns established prior to 1864, probably in imitation of the Adelaide plan.  In 1864, Surveyor-General G W Goyder provided instructions to his staff that all new towns should have encircling parklands, and that town land should be laid out in the form of a square, with the roads at right angles to each other, and with five public squares. The parkland town remained popular until 1919, when South Australia’s newly appointed town planner, Charles Reade, recommended that it no longer be used.

The Adelaide Plan displayed all of the key elements that made up the ‘grand modell’ of the era, including: a policy of deliberate urbanisation, or town planning, in preference to dispersed settlement; land rights allocated in a combination of town, suburban and country lots; the town planned and laid out in advance of settlement; wide streets laid out in geometric, form, usually on an area of one square mile; public square; spacious, standard–sized rectangular plots; plots reserved for public purposes; and a physical distinction between town and country, by common land or an encircling green belt (City Futures 2007 p. 184).  
 
The Adelaide Plan has provided a robust framework for the development of the central city and has been an important influence on its attractive and scenic character. It was used as a model for founding towns in inland South Australia (including the present Northern Territory) and Christchurch in New Zealand. Whilst the Plan was essentially a one-off morphological design rather than a comprehensive urban plan, it was also lauded from the 19th century within modern town planning circles. The 1893 meeting of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science recorded universal credit to Light for his selection of the site and for the design of Adelaide. The early Australian planning movement celebrated its originality. The leading architect-planning advocate John Sulman singled out Adelaide as an exception to the usual prosaic planning of Australian towns, and A.J. Brown and H.M. Sherrard made the same assessment in their 1951 textbook for a later generation of planners (City Futures 2007 p. 184).   
 
The Adelaide Plan was interconnected with the international and post-colonial planning movement when used in Ebenezer Howard’s manifesto, Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902) to illustrate ‘the correct principle of a city’s growth’. Based on ideas of cellular and constrained expansion, Howard’s garden city movement had an international impact. The plan of Adelaide was an undoubted influence on Howard’s thinking, and the connection underpins its planning heritage significance(City Futures 2007 p. 184).  

A number of towns in New Zealand were also based on the Adelaide plan, including Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Wanganui, Hamilton, Alexandra, Clyde, Cromwell, Gore, Port Chalmers and New Plymouth.  In Wellington, a crescent-shaped town belt was provided, and in conjunction with the harbour it encloses the city and separates it from the surrounding land.  It remains substantially intact.

The plan also influenced the Garden City movement that developed at the turn of the century.  In Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Ebenezer Howard cited Adelaide as an example of an existing city that conformed to the Garden City idea.

‘Consider for a moment the case of a city in Australia which in some measure illustrates the principle for which I am contending.  The city of Adelaide, as the accompanying sketch map shows, is surrounded by its ‘Park Lands’.  The city is built up. How does it grow?  It grows by leaping over the ‘park-lands’ and establishing North Adelaide.  And this is the principle which it is intended to follow, but improve upon, in Garden City.’
 
History of the Adelaide Parklands
The site for the City of Adelaide was selected by Colonel William Light, South Australia's first Surveyor General, in 1836. The city was laid out as two distinct sectors on either side of the River Torrens and the whole area was surrounded by a continuous belt of parkland, now known as the Adelaide Park Lands. 

The original plan for Adelaide set aside 2300 acres for the Park Lands, with provision for nine blocks to be ‘received out of the Park Lands for various government building or other purposes’. These included the Government domain, Botanic Gardens, School, Store House, Guard House, Barracks, Hospital, Cemetery and Immigration Square. 

In 1839 Governor George Gawler purchased the Parklands to ensure that they remained intact ‘for the inhabitants of the city’. The Parklands came under the care, control and management of the Adelaide City Council in 1849. At that time a large area had already been claimed for governmental functions. In 1856 the South Australian Institute was created by Act of Parliament and land sought for an Institute Building. In 1860 seven sections of the area between North Terrace and the River Torrens, originally part of the Park Lands, were allocated as a government reserve for various government and institutional purposes (Adelaide: A brief History: 2-3).  Since then the total area alienated for all purposes is approximately one third of the 2300 acres. These developments include the Art Gallery, Festival Centre, Museum, Botanical and Zoological Gardens, State Library, University of Adelaide, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Police Barracks, Observatory, the Railway Station and Adelaide High School. In recent times, a number of commercial developments have been permitted in the Parklands, including the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the Adelaide Convention Centre. 

During the first decades after European settlement, the Parklands accommodated stone quarries, clay and lime pits, a mill, extensive olive plantations and rubbish dumps, all of which altered its original character and landform. In 1840, a slaughterhouse was established in Bonython Park and it remained in operation until 1910. Adelaide's first cemetery was established in the western Parklands in 1837, and there is evidence that the first game of Australian Rules football in South Australia was played in the northern Parklands in April 1860. The Parklands were also used for the pasturing of sheep, cattle and horses. 

Especially in the early days of the colony, the Park Lands were under constant threat of land acquisition, and activities such as tree felling and quarrying. From some of these activities, substantial Council revenue was generated and by the 1850s the Park Lands had been denuded of trees to such an extent that a Council replanting program was commenced.
A number of formal gardens, recreational facilities and sporting grounds were established in the Parklands, including the Zoological Gardens (RNE Nos. 18593 and 18585), the Botanic Gardens (RNE No. 6433), the Elder Park Bandstand (RNE No.6351) and the Women's War Memorial Gardens (RNE No.14568). The South Australian Cricket Association began to develop the Adelaide Oval after it was established in 1871 (RNE No.19236) and the South Australian Jockey Club established Victoria Park Racecourse in 1847 (RNE No.18546). 

In the 1870s, large-scale tree planting schemes were implemented by Adelaide's Lord Mayor, Sir Edwin Smith, to beautify the Parklands. John Ednie Brown proposed a planting design, A Report on a System of Planting the Adelaide Park Lands (1880) (Jones, 1998:36). At this time, many eucalypts were replaced with ashes, elms, poplar and other exotics. By the late 1930s, much of the present road network was in place, and roads now define the edges of the Parklands. After World War II the use of the Parklands intensified considerably. During the 1950s the City Council initiated a number of projects to develop the Parklands, including a large landscape garden (Veale Gardens) in the South Parklands in 1958, a swimming centre in the North Parklands in 1967, a par 3 golf course, a restaurant overlooking the River Torrens in 1960 and the Festival Theatre complex in Elder Park in 1974. 

At the time of settlement, the Adelaide Plains were occupied by Kaurna people, whose descendants continue to maintain connections with their traditional lands.  The natural ecosystems which made up the country prior to European settlement were swamp, woodland, mallee, grasslands and forests.  In part the landscape was the result of Aboriginal occupation, which included seasonally burning of the land to reduce undergrowth and regenerate plant growth.  European settlers were attracted to the Adelaide plains, according to Ellis (1976: 7) because its lightly-timbered open grassland resembled English countryside.  With the establishment of Adelaide, the parklands gained particular significance for Aboriginal people as places to gather and camp on the fringes of the city.

The Indigenous Flag designed by Harold Thomas, was first flown at Victoria Square, in Adelaide, on National Aboriginal Day on 12 July 1971.  The flag later became universally recognised as a representation of Aboriginal identity, and its association with many Aboriginal activists and protests, including its long associated with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.  

The Adelaide Parklands have been valued by many South Australians over time for their aesthetic qualities, and as a place for recreation and other community activities. The first community group, the Parklands Preservation League was formed in 1903, which was succeeded by the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association.

Condition:
The Park Lands and the layout of the City of Adelaide remain substantially intact and still recognisable as the 1837 Plan. The original plan is evident in the boundaries of the City, the width and layout of the main streets, the belt of Park Lands, the squares and remnant town acres.  
The alienation of the Park Lands from general public access has been occurring since they were laid out, primarily for public uses. Approximately one third of the original area has now been alienated for other purposes. The Adelaide City Council has the ‘care, control and management’ of approximately 74 percent of the originally designated Adelaide Park Lands, which is around 1700 acres, and these areas are generally well maintained (RNE No.102551: June 2001). New road routes, primarily through the Park Lands link the City and North Adelaide with the suburbs. 
 
The City and North Adelaide were originally divided into one-acre blocks. Few entire one acre blocks remain although it is possible to discern the original boundaries of the town acres in some instances (particularly in North Adelaide where the town acres were often subdivided into four blocks). These sites tend to primarily be in the ownership of government and church, including use by schools and hospitals.
 
The area now known as the cultural and institutional precinct along North Terrace contains institutions such as the University of Adelaide and the Art Gallery of South Australia which form a visual barrier between the northern and southern parts of the Light Plan. These institutions have also acquired heritage significance. The Railway Station, a hotel and convention centre adjoining it were alienated from Park Lands in the western part of North Terrace.
 
The City contains numerous minor north-south streets constructed within a few years of survey, that were not part of the original plan.  In addition, Frome Road was cut through the western part of the City in the 1960s, and runs from Angas Street to North Terrace. In other instances, streets were realigned or extended through the Park Lands to link Adelaide with the surrounding suburbs.  For example, King William Street was realigned in the early twentieth century to link North Adelaide and the City, Kintore Avenue was extended from North Terrace down to the River Torrens and the alignment of Montefiore Hill which leads to Light’s Vision, an outlook point at North Adelaide over the City, was changed to create a major thoroughfare from Morphett Street to Jeffcott Street. Numerous roads were built through the Park Lands to connect with the suburbs, including Glover Avenue, Burbridge Road, Goodwood Road, Sir Lewis Cohen Avenue, Peacock Road, Unley Road, Hutt Road, Wakefield Street and Rundle Road. War Memorial Drive was built as a war memorial along the River Torrens. Medindie Road, Lefevre Road, Main North Road, Prospect Road and Jeffcott Street were all extended from North Adelaide through the Park Lands to link with the suburbs.
 
Of the six squares, the changes to Victoria Square, the central and largest Square, are the most noticeable. Victoria Square was planned to be a focal point for the City but it has become surrounded by office development around its perimeter. The Square has been encroached upon by King William Street, which has had an impact on views through the square.  Hindmarsh, Light and Hurtle Square have also been subdivided by roads. Whitmore Square and Wellington Square are the most intact of the squares.

 
 
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