Canberra was planned by ________.

Fill in the blank with the correct option.

The correct option is Walter Burley Griffin.

Detailed Explanation:
Canberra, the federal capital city of Australia, was selected to be built in 1908 as a compromise between rival cities Sydney and Melbourne.
To design this new capital city, the Australian government launched an international design competition in 1911.
The competition attracted numerous entries from town planners and architects worldwide.

In 1912, the design submitted by American architect and landscape architect Walter Burley Griffin (along with his partner and wife Marion Mahony Griffin) was selected as the winning entry.
Griffin's design was highly influenced by the Garden City movement. It incorporated geometric patterns such as hexagons and triangles, centered around a system of axial axes aligned with major topographical landmarks in the area, and featured a large central artificial lake system (now known as Lake Burley Griffin).
Therefore, Walter Burley Griffin is recognized as the planner of Canberra.

Brief Overview of the Other Options:
• Patrick Geddes: A pioneering Scottish sociologist, geographer, and town planner, widely known for introducing concepts like "conurbation" and region-based planning, but not associated with the design of Canberra.
• Jean Gottmann: A French geographer famous for his studies and coining of the term "Megalopolis" to describe the urban region of the northeastern United States.
• George Zipf: An American linguist and philologist known for Zipf's law, which describes the statistical distribution of word frequencies and city sizes (rank-size rule), rather than urban design planning.