Functional zoning

[6]: 22  The park was designed by Colonel William Light in 1836 in order to physically separate the city centre from its suburbs.

[7]: 94  His design for an ideal city, published in his 1902 book Garden Cities of To-morrow, envisaged separate concentric rings of public buildings, parks, retail space, residential areas and industrial areas, all surrounded by open space and farmland.

[7] All retail activity was to be conducted within a single glass-roofed building, an early concept for the modern shopping centre inspired by the Crystal Palace.

[8] Zoning ordinances like this one went beyond the earlier city plans to create a process for setting guidelines for what could be built where.

[8] The application of single-use zoning has led to the distinctive form of many cities in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in which a very dense urban core, often containing skyscrapers, is surrounded by low density residential suburbs, characterised by large gardens and leafy streets.