TO move up or to move out, that is the question Perth planners have been contemplating in recent years as a city built on the quarter acre dream deals with increasing population density issues.
The rule of thumb tends to be that 40 per cent of the growth in population is housed in the existing metropolitan area, while 60 per cent will live in areas created by urban sprawl.
For Perth in 2050, that means an extra 720,000 in the existing footprint and 1,080,000 in areas outside of that.
New commercial centres will most likely grow in the Peel area, north-east and south-east corridors, while expansion beyond the northern most suburbs of Jindalee and Butler to Alkimos, Yanchep and Two Rocks has long been on the cards.
The joint venture behind the Yanchep Beach proposal has been pursuing its development of an urban centre 50 kilometres north of the Perth CBD since 2007.
The foundations of a shopping centre have been laid and a 3,000 square metre commercial space development is under way – a key attraction for new residents. It’s expected up to 155,000 people will live in Yanchep by 2060.
Encouraging what Town of Vincent Mayor Alannah MacTiernan describes as “intensification in the existing footprint of Perth and central areas that fringe the city” will also play an important role.
Ms MacTiernan said the Town of Vincent was currently approving an average of two properties of four or five storeys each week, and was focused on growing the density on arterial roads in the area, which encapsulates some of Mount Lawley and West Perth and all of Leederville, Highgate and North Perth, among other suburbs.
She said Leederville was the perfect example of an area in Perth that is ripe for ‘intensification’, and large developments such as that proposed for the Water Corporation site were a key element to that density.
However, transport was key to the success of these projects.
“There is just no way that you could allow that massive development to go ahead without there being real investment in road and rail infrastructure in the area because the place would just simply reach grid lock,” Ms MacTiernan said.
Demographer Bernard Salt is an advocate for density playing a role in urban development for both practical and cultural reasons.
“We have been spoilt with the amount of land we have been able to have and it is not sustainable. Petrol might be $10 a litre by the middle of the century; you can’t keep driving from Quinns Rocks into the CBD, we simply cannot sustain that model,” he said.
“The only way around it is to create density in the metropolitan footprint and to decentralise jobs.”
Based on the current employment rate, an additional 1,330,200 jobs will be needed in WA by 2050 should the population grow to 3.5 million, so that strategy could become imperative if the city wants to avoid clogged freeways.
Mr Salt said density bred human activity, a sentiment that economist and interim director of International Mining for Development Centre Ian Satchwell agrees with.
“Perth has the opportunity to transform itself to be a place that is ethnically and culturally rich, knowledge and technology intensive and a place that nurtures and attracts creative people,” Mr Satchwell said.
He pointed to the state’s ‘Directions 2031’ paper, which stresses the importance of developing a culturally rich community in order to attract architects, engineers and other creative professionals which will build the ‘intellectual capital’ of the city and push it to become a globally competitive city in its new form.
Perth will have a fair degree of cultural diversity, given that 1,040,000 of the extra 1.8 million people tipped to come to the city will come through international migration. Just 684,000 will come through natural additions and 72,000 through interstate migration.
Committee for Perth chief executive Marion Fulker believes that, in the past, newcomers to Perth have had to normalise to the city’s lifestyle, but that will change.
“I don’t think people are saying they want to come and change Perth, I think they are saying it has so much to offer that hasn’t yet been exploited,” Ms Fulker said.
“We want to still be Perth when we grow up but I don’t think we know what parts need to come with us and what parts we need to leave behind. Conservatism is what I think we need to leave behind.”
