A MAJOR Perth think tank has urged the state government to develop a vision for the city that can comfortably accommodate a forecast doubling of the population and avoid mistakes that would result in a dysfunctional community.
In a report launched this week, the Committee for Perth has advocated that the state government undertakes a consultative approach with the public to prepare a long-term, collective vision for the metropolitan area and a strategy for delivering that.
The report, entitled ‘Towards a Bright Future – a vision for Perth as a region of 3.5 million people’, is long on motherhood concepts and short on detail, clearly aiming to push the government to show leadership in defining the outcome.
Committee CEO Marion Fulker said Perth’s rapid growth was the catalyst for the report, because the business-as-usual case would lead to dysfunction if the city doubled in size without politically agreeable vision.
“The thousand people coming per week to Western Australia … is what is creating the impetus,” Ms Fulker said.
“More people are coming but we have the systems we have always had.
“We have a very incremental approach to growth; just add another lane on the freeway or a few more rail carriages.
“What we are talking about is a systemic change; how do we strategically approach this growth so that we can be the beneficiary of it?”
Asked whether the economic uncertainty abounding at the time of the report’s launch might snuff out its key driver, rapid population growth, Ms Fulker said Perth would reach 3.5 million people at some stage, be it 2030 or 2060, and the city ought to be prepared for it.
The chairman of the report’s steering committee was former WA governor Ken Michael, once the state’s Main Roads commissioner.
Dr Michael said the city needed a new blueprint like the Stephenson-Hepburn plan, which had guided Perth’s urban development for 50 years.
However, Dr Michael said the next blueprint had to go beyond lines on a map, which is why the report focused on broader issues such as affordable housing, red tape, multiculturalism and diversity, acknowledgement of the region’s indigenous history, lifestyle, knowledge and creativity, sustainability, transport integration, safety and economic prosperity.
Dr Michael said the Directions 2031 policy of the state government did offer some direction but it was limited in scope.
“Perhaps we need to do more,” he said.
Only in transport did the committee’s report make a recommendation, which might be classed as specific; endorsing the government’s proposed development of a light rail network.
Given it is a transport initiative broadly supported by both major political parties, that choice might have been something of a safe bet in a public policy arena fraught with division.
Both Dr Michael and Ms Fulker anecdotally offered more specific concepts than those mentioned in the report – citing the urban development of areas such as East Perth and Ellenbrook and highlighting the creation of the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority as examples of good vision and planning.
Ms Fulker acknowledged that the collaborative approach the committee’s report asked for was a challenge given the difficulty governments have had in sticking to visions offered by their predecessors.
For example, the sports stadium has been a political football as has the foreshore project.
“That we are not ambivalent about our city is a credit to us but that fact that we very quickly divide into the ‘for’ or ‘against’ on any issue is a real weakness,” Ms Fulker said.
“We want the vision that unites us. In other jurisdictions they have managed to do this.
“If we are only going to plan in four-year (electoral) cycles around political persuasions Perth is not going to be a great place.”
