A New Urbanism (1995 - now) 

Perth is a city characterised by booms and busts, with the most recent decades very much part of the boom cycle. The city’s population has grown dramatically and its economy has rivalled that of China’s in terms of growth. This of course creates opportunities but also challenges. Perth has always been a spread city, but recently the fact that some seventy percent of the city’s growth is suburban means that the city pushes daily and destructively out at its margins into once-productive farmland or highly biodiverse banksia woodlands. Despite the latest boom, Perth suffers some of Australia’s worst rates of homelessness, with high rates of incarceration, particularly for its indigenous citizens. Perth is still a city built for the car, and has according to one statistic the world’s fourth highest car-ownership rate, although the recent congestion on the city’s roads has rightly put the focus back on public transport. And yet, despite all this, there is a new vibrancy to the city, due in part to changes made to outmoded zoning laws, and a rapidly growing population of citizens in the 26-30 age group. Despite state government cuts to arts funding, the emergence of the Fringe World Festival and the continued popularity of the PIAF bring people into the city, where new developments such as the Cathedral Square redevelopment and the refurbishment of Newspaper House, and the bringing of the city and river together at Elizabeth Quay, and the recent linking of Northbridge to the CBD are focussed on creating a more dynamic and populated city centre, as it was before most of the people left for the suburbs near a century ago.