Suburbs of Canberra

The suburbs of Canberra are organised into a hierarchy of districts, town centres, group centres, local suburbs and other industrial areas and villages. While these divisions have no formal role in the governance or administration of the city, they formed a basis for the planning and development of the city and are significant to the city’s commercial and social activities.

For a complete list, see List of Canberra suburbs

Most suburbs of Canberra are designed around local shops, centrally located within walking distance of the outer parts of the suburb. Consequently, they are generally smaller in size to the suburbs of other cities. A typical Canberra suburb is bounded on all sides by major roads, and at the centre, contains local shops, or at least a local store. Some also contain a petrol station, a church, or other community facilities. Many also contain a primary school and a preschool.

As a result of these commercial and community facilities being located in the centre of suburbs, Canberra lacks strip shopping along major roads and appears to be ‘empty’ to most visitors. In the older areas, major roads are lined with houses, and in the newer areas they are typically landscaped with mounds of earth and vegetation to form ‘parkways’.

Canberra’s residential districts were developed with the intention of being semi-self-contained satellite towns with an intended population of about 80,000 people. The districts contain town centres which serve as commercial, transport and employment nodes. The districts are separated by nature reserves, and in most cases were designed according to a policy of ridges and valleys where the urban areas were located in valleys, separated by ridges, containing nature parks. There are seven districts in Canberra, each is divided into between eight and 25 suburbs, but on average about eighteen. Canberra’s Territory Plan also contains districts located outside of the urban areas for the purposes of land administration.

Following the transfer of land from the Government of New South Wales to the Commonwealth Government in 1911, eighteen original districts were established in 1966 by the Commonwealth via the gazettal of the Districts Ordinance 1966 No. 5 (Cth) which, after the enactment of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 (Cth), became the Districts Act 1966 No. 5 (ACT). This Act was subsequently repealed by the ACT Government and all districts and the land contained within are now administered subject to the Districts Act 2002 (ACT).

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