The vision for the City of Perth 2050

“Imagine flying your drone over inlets and islands on either side of Elizabeth Quay.

You land on a finger wharf at the Western end and do a bit of grocery shopping at the farmers market.

As you wait for the afternoon air traffic to die down you watch university students trickle out of their campus and into the bars, galleries and cafes along a 3km river-front strip.

Later, they’ll take ferries and light rail to their student towers in Northbridge East.

Your own apartment is on St Georges Terrace, next door to an office tower, overlooking lush parklands that once housed a convoluted network of roads and bus ramps.

Welcome to the city of Perth in 2050.”

Property Consultancy Urbis has created a master plan with the above suggestions as well as their own ideas on how Perth should develop moving forward. This plan has drawn inspiration from many beautiful cities around the world including Singapore by ensuring an abundance of greenery, reclaiming road networks for recreation like New York and finger wharves along the Swan River as in Brisbane, as well as many more.

This master plan is centered around the following 9 initiatives which will heighten tourism and rejuvenate Perth:

1. A closer connection to the river
2. A green city
3. A creative city
4. A city icon
5. A smart city
6. A living city
7. A connected city
8. A beautiful and diverse city
9. A resilient city

Chris Melsom the design director at Urbis believes that Perth needs an icon just like Sydney has the Opera House. While we have some fantastic designs like the OPTUS Stadium, Elizabeth Quay and Yagan Square, we need an overall project plan to ensure all these and future projects work cohesively together.

In the plan, Urbis has stressed the need for Perth to plan for the eventuality of passenger-planes and automatic vehicles. We also need an increase of greenery to reduce heat build-up from the glass and concrete towers by including more trees on terraces, podiums and rooftops. A full university campus in the city will help to attract the world’s best minds which requires student towers and accommodation, increased plot ratios to allow for taller and bigger buildings like in Melbourne and light rail and ferries are needed to better link various areas in Perth.

This is a summary of the article ‘Future Perth’ by Kim Macdonald published in The West Australian | Property | Page 64 | Wednesday 16^th October 2019.