City planners debating the issues of growth, sustainability, community and environment in Perth have vast resources of information available to them via the experiences of other cities throughout the world.
City planners debating the issues of growth, sustainability, community and environment in Perth have vast resources of information available to them via the experiences of other cities throughout the world.
One such city, and one that has many parallels with Perth, is Vancouver, on the west coast of Canada.
Vancouver is widely recognised as one of the most liveable cities in the world, managing to strike a vibrant balance between high-density residential development of the urban core and lifestyle and open space.
Perth, famously labelled ‘Dullsville’ in 2000, has come under fire for its lack of vibrancy, and although residential developments have been springing up in the last few years throughout the CBD, the city still lacks many of the characteristics that make for a dynamic and successful metropolis.
Images of Vancouver taken over a 10-year time frame provide examples of what can be accomplished with planning, preparation and vision.
And that’s good news for Perth.
Vancouver’s current population of just more than two million is the forecast population for Perth in 2031, and the challenges in dealing with rapid growth are not foreign to Vancouver.
Visiting Perth last week, Professor Gordon Price from University of British Columbia addressed a Property Council lunch on the experience and success of urban development in Vancouver.
“I would say that Vancouver has more in common with Perth than it does with Seattle – the culture, lifestyle and way of doing business is more aligned between Australians and Canadians than Canadians and Americans,” Professor Price said.
“Perth does need to draw on its own values and identity, but can learn some lessons from our experiences in Vancouver, just like we learnt some lessons from Hong Kong about off-the-plan pre sales, something which was previously unheard off in North America.”
Perhaps the most glaring difference between Perth and Vancouver is the planning process.
Professor Price painted a picture of co-operation, expediency, and compromise between the planning authorities and developers.
“We used a co-operative planning model where the developer had to sit down with city representatives and then jointly come up with strategies, plans and designs,” he said.
It is no secret that Perth’s planning process has come under intense pressure for its layers of bureaucracy, inefficiency and indeterminacy of outcomes.
Professor Price acknowledges that high-density living is not for everyone, and made the point of saying that people do not live in the one form for their entire lives.
“The quarter acre block is as much part of the Australian ideal as it is the North American one, but higher density living offers the trade of the hassle of transport to the city with less space, but also a higher degree of amenity,” Professor Price said.
“It is appropriate for some people at some points in their lives, but not all people all the time.”
He outlined six conditions necessary for density: having a community that chooses to have density; risk takers to create it; bankers that support it; skilled professionals to implement it; a reliable legal and political system to support it; and the market to buy it.
Remarkably, Vancouver has experienced a decline in vehicle ownership in the past few years, matched by a massive increase in walking, cycling and rollerblading as means of transport.
“Clearly the problem in Perth is how to deal with suburban sprawl,” Professor Price said.
“People say that no-one wants to live in the city, but maybe the problem is that there is not enough of the right product to attract them.
“Neighbourliness is the key to how development is done, and the trend it must respond to – if you don’t develop well, you lose the opportunity to create complete communities.”
