Charles Reade (town planner)

Charles Compton Reade (4 May 1880 – 28 October 1933) was a town planner who supported the garden city movement of the early twentieth century.

Born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1880, Reade became the major figure in disseminating garden city ideas in Australia. Reade saw the evils of inner city slums while working as a journalist in England and began writing of the need for improved town planning, becoming active in the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association of Great Britain, of which he was acting secretary and editor for its magazine in 1913.

In 1914–15 he led a lecture tour through five Australian States and New Zealand. South Australia appointed Reade as a town planning adviser in 1916 and later he became its first official Town Planner in 1918, retaining the position until 1920. In 1917 he drew up plans for an Adelaide garden suburb, initially with a working title of Mitcham Garden Suburb and officially named Colonel Light Gardens.

Reade convened Australia's first two town planning and housing conferences in 1917 and 1918. He also twice tried to get town planning legislation through the South Australian state legislature: on the first occasion it was defeated by the property-oriented upper House and on the second was passed but was heavily amended by the House.

Reade then left Australia for overseas planning positions, establishing a town planning department in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya in 1921 and moving to Northern Rhodesia in 1929. He committed suicide in South Africa in 1933, only nine days after becoming Chief Planning Officer of Witwatersrand.

Extensive academic study of the life and work of Charles Reade has been conducted by Associate Professor Christine Garnaut of the University of South Australia.