Advancing regional and community planning in Australia: the contribution of the Office of Frank Heath 1939–1948

Abstract

Australian postwar reconstruction in the 1940s saw idealistic synergies between decentralization, regional development, and ‘new town’ planning. Two architect-planners associated with this modernising impulse were Frank Heath and Ernest Fooks. Collaborating within Heath’s eponymous practice they proposed a series of plans for the expansion of 13 regional towns during and immediately after the Second World War. Melbourne-trained Heath and Viennese-educated Fooks drew on a consistent vocabulary of planning and design concepts, notably neighbourhood unit principles or as they sometimes described them ‘rayons’ following Soviet practice. Their work integrated a blend of decentralization ideology,..