Walter Burley Griffin responded to the idealism of the Australian brief for the design competition for the nation’s capital with an ‘Ideal City’ with the potential to capture the imagination of the world.

Early in 2016 the ACT Minister for Planning and Land Management put on exhibition for comment the Five Year ACT Heritage Strategy 2016-2021 Discussion Paper.

The WBGS made a submission with recommendations aimed at the retention of the Griffin vision. The Society recommended that the ACT Heritage Council:-
1. support the extant nominations for Canberra to be placed on the National Heritage List;
2. advocate an integrated sustainability approach to the formation of development proposals and management policies; and
3. enlarge the Heritage Strategy to include re- imagined ‘whole of Canberra’ heritage criteria on the basis of central Canberra’s fundamental DNA in the enduring vision, plans, principles and values provided by Walter Burley Griffin. Reference can be made to outstanding vistas, outcropping hills, the natural landscape, Lake Burley Griffin, its foreshores and the magnificent three-dimensional spatial planning, NCDC district plans and landscape architecture, as well as significant public and domestic architecture. Other ‘whole-of-Canberra’ candidates for the Heritage Strategy would be City Hill, West Basin, Pialligo Estate, Majura Valley rural farm buildings, Hall and Tharwa Villages, Weston and Pryor tree stands and parks, Canberra Nature Park and most starkly, the Manuka precinct.

WBGS letter to the ACT Minister for Planning and Land Management 3/4/2016