This paper analyses the decisions made during the development of public memorial proposals in Canberra and Melbourne. It develops a general model of the memorial development process and characterises four distinct procurement approaches used: open competitions, invited competitions, direct commissioning, and ‘grassroots’ initiatives that bypass formal planning procedures.

After outlining the issues to be explored and the types of data that can shed light on them, this paper provides a brief history of the major memorials erected in Canberra up until 2002, and the rationales that shaped them. The main focus of the paper is then new commemorative projects that have developed in...

This paper critically examines the urban design of waterfront cultural and leisure precincts in Australian cities, in terms of simple functional planning matters such as use, scale and connectivity, but also examining how these are entangled in more complex representational, behavioural and political outcomes.