Why don't Canberra houses have front fences?

By David Saxberg.

Steven Bailie has been in Canberra for the last 10 years and he poses the question: Why aren’t there any front fences in Canberra?

He wanted to know what was classed as a fence by the ACT Government.

“People do things to create fences… it’s a really grey line,” Steven said.

Finding the rule confusing, he jokingly asked, “Is there an officer of fences in Canberra?”

I went in search of the answer for Curious Canberra and this is what I found.

Decision dates back to 1924

The ban on front fences began in 1924 and grew out of a design debate, according to Professor Nicholas Brown, a historian at the Australian National University (ANU).

“The argument essentially came out of a move from (Walter) Burley Griffin’s concept of a really dense form of development for Canberra to Sir John Sulman, who really took over the planning of Canberra,” he said.

“Sulman was an advocate of what was called a garden city idea, which was that every house should be a sort of self-contained cottage on its own block that would encourage people to be good citizens.”

In Sulman’s Canberra, front fences didn’t have a place.

“The concern was if you allowed front fences you couldn’t find out what people were doing behind them. And that people might make the distinction between the beautiful city that they were supposed to be part of and their own little patch of ground in which they would go wild,” he said.

A short history of hedges

So how did locals get around the bareness of their front lawns?

Nicholas explained that hedges were allowed in place of fences. Initially they were provided and maintained by the government.

“They were trimmed quite low so that they were never hedges behind which people could hide but they were part of a garden facade that the house presented to the street,” he said.

The rule about front fences was just one elements of a heavily planned capital. When it came to housing there were also rules about building materials and design.

“People would often say that Canberra presented in the 1920s to 1930s a really homogenised standardised front,” Nicholas said.

“That was intentional because it was about making a community and not allowing people to form ghettos.”

The rule today

The ban on front fences remains in place and the current rules are available on the ACT Government website.

The policy only applies to freestanding houses and I contacted the ACT Government to find out more. A statement explained why fences can be seen in some parts of Canberra.

“With a greater proportion of new residential blocks being smaller blocks, there are, for many suburbs, precinct codes which allow for front fences for particular blocks or groups of blocks,” the statement reads.

“There is also a General Code for residential fencing that is part of the Territory Plan which provides opportunities for house owners to seek the territory’s approval for fences on one of the front boundaries of a corner block.”

While there isn’t an officer of fences as Steven had hoped, the ACT Government said Access Canberra does investigate complaints that are made in writing.

Community support for longstanding rule

What do Canberrans who live in the city today think about the no fence policy?

To get a range of community responses, I contacted a number of residents’ associations.

Crace Community Association president David Pollard told me that fences aren’t generally seen in the area.

If someone were to build one, he believes the community would be displeased but accepting.

“Crace is quite multicultural and a lot of people have different expectations of what they want out of living there but it is also reasonably tolerant, so while I suggest people would be unhappy (if a fence was erected) … I don’t think there would be calls to pull it down,” David said.

Mike Hettinger is the president of the North Canberra Community Council, which includes Dickson, Turner and Braddon.

“I think in general people wouldn’t be happy with big fences along residential streets,” he said.

“Ideally the code would be enforced consistently and it would also read in a way that if anyone did need to build a fence, it would be done in a consistent way not in an ad-hoc manner which is basically what’s happening now.”

After looking at two northern areas of Canberra it was time to cross the lake to the beautiful leafy suburbs of the south.

Rebecca Scouller is the president of the Kingston and Barton Residents’ Association, where front fences are virtually non-existent.

“We have a lot of heritage houses and older houses in Kingston and Barton, so I think the tradition has been either a very low separation or a hedge and that’s been maintained,” she said.

“I think that the community likes it, no one seems to want to put up a large fence and the tradition has continued.”

Will the rule remain?

While there seems to be community support for the ban on front fences, Nicholas Brown says there have always been exceptions to the rule.

“Certain people could get around [the rule] because they would make a case that, ‘I need a bit a bit of privacy’ or ‘I’ve got a horse in the garden and I don’t want it to get out’,” Nicholas said.

“Embassies would also start making a case, particularly embassies from the Soviet bloc in the 1970s and the 1980s when they became targets for some forms of political violence.”

With the rule still standing, homeowners need to seek permission to build fence but Nicholas believes that attitudes are changing, owing in part to a rise in medium-density housing.

“I think there a whole lot of social forces, including the safety of children that means that people are becoming much more inclined to say – I need a fence,” he said.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.

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**Feature image via iStock.