senior WA registered landscape architect
comments on Perth's streetscapes

Get soul into the city, landscape chief urges

The West Australian   19th December 2007, 5:15 WST

Perth’s vast potential is being strangled by over-reliance on cars and poor use of public space resulting in bland, soulless suburbs, according to Australian Institute of Landscape Architects new WA president Greg Grabasch.

Mr Grabasch said Perth, with its abundance of natural beauty, had the potential to be a world-class city but years of leaving landscape and streetscape design to planners who had not been trained in creating effective public spaces was killing the city’s character.

Perth had more public open space than most capital cities worldwide but the majority of it was poorly designed and under-used, he said.

The push for public spaces to be commercially viable had shifted the focus from community-based cultural and artistic activities to shopping.
  
He said the foreshore, in particular, failed to meet its potential because the Perth City Council’s fear of criticism and residents’ concerns the natural feature would be ruined had made the Swan River “untouchable”, despite spaces like Langley Park being chronically under-used.
  
“The foreshore is beautiful but you can only look at it for so long and then people start to forget about it,” he said.
  
“Every bit of open space needs to be used for some reason, whether it is a picnic reason or a kicking the football reason, and just being surrounded by shops is not enough to activate it.”
  
The former combat engineer, who will lead the institute for two years, said while the council needed a master plan for major projects, such as the long-awaited Northbridge link and foreshore redevelopment, different international urban designers should be called on to plan different sections of each project to ensure the overall effect was not bland and homogenous.
  
Mr Grabasch said the city needed to move away from the American streetscape design, heavily influenced by car use, and adopt a European pedestrian-friendly approach with a focus on creating welcoming and vibrant village centres. The road system encouraged driving rather than making use of local amenities.
  
He recommended a return to narrower streets and footpaths to make motorists slow down and encourage walking or cycling.
  
“A good urban landscape is a patchwork and it is made up of different layers, but Perth has become so over-engineered that we are making it bland,” Mr Grabasch said.

“People seem to think they have a right to big, flat blocks to build on and there is a focus on aesthetics and beauty but in the process we are flattening the landscape and destroying everything that we love about it.”

TIFFANY LAURIE