Abstract: As much as anything, urban development over the last century has been about suburbia. The design of housing estates and the centres that serve them have continually exercised the minds of planners, of developers and of the local, state and federal authorities charged with strategic planning, infrastructure investment and development control. This paper considers suburban development in Adelaide as it has evolved since the introduction of comprehensive town planning around the time of World War 1. In particular it traces key design themes that have informed the shape of subdivisions and housing estates. These themes include neighbourhood units, centres for community and commercial activities, the layout of streets, allotments and open spaces and the melding of these features with the landscape. They are summarised by reference to the seminal Colonel Light Gardens suburb of the 1920s, the Living Areas concepts in the 1962 Report on the Metropolitan Area of Adelaide, the projects of the South Australian Housing Trust over the decades, the proposed city of Monarto in the 1970s, the master planned private estates of the 1980s and 1990s at West Lakes, Golden Grove and Seaford, and recent projects such as Mawson Lakes.