Spread too thin: What we’re losing as Perth sprawls

Back in the 1980s I moved my young family to Barcelona, one of the most densely populated cities in Europe.

Indeed, our apartment was in the most crowded part of the Catalan capital, Hospitalet de Llobregat, a working-class and émigré melting pot far removed from the glamour sections featured in magazine spreads, travel shows and movies such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Each morning we walked our son Max through Hospitalet’s bustling streets, picking up a pan de chocolate (chocolate-filled croissant) for his morning tea, and each afternoon we dropped him into a small park directly across from our apartment, where he spent the rest of the day running amok with the neighbourhood kids.

A quadrangle surrounded by apartments on all sides, Parc de la Marquesa was a dust bowl. But the kids didn’t care. They had the time of their lives — running, fighting, climbing, playing soccer and, in the process, stressing out an embattled tree that the elderly gardener Pepe treated like a patient on life support.

And it was perfectly safe because there were plenty of adults talking on benches or playing petanca, the Spanish form of boule. More importantly, we could see everything from our second-floor apartment window, so if the play got a little too rough we would scream at Jordi or Javier to leave Massimo alone! Que pasa, nino!

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And each night Max would come home a right mess — covered in dust and dirt, battered and bruised and exhausted — but completely happy and ready for dinner, a book and bed and looking forward to another round in the next day.

My memories of our time in Barcelona came flooding back while reading the first article in WAtoday’s series on the sprawl of the Perth metropolitan area, which paints a startling picture of a city that now has a footprint twice the size of Tokyo but houses one-sixth of its population.

According to property developer Nigel Satterley, the man most responsible for our city’s acceleration towards a 220 kilometre-long coverage of the coastal plain, most people still crave a house-and-land package, even though it is moving them further and further away from the CBD and extending commute times, which are expected by 2030 to double from its current 30 to 40-minute average.

While Satterley sees the master-planned estates his company has been creating since the early 80s as like small country towns – close-knit communities that are close enough essential facilities there is little need ever to go into the CBD – these estates are now so far-flung I fear that children will never enjoy the richness and vibrancy of the life our son briefly enjoyed in Barcelona.

There are beautiful parks and wonderful facilities in new suburbs such as Jindalee and Alkimos in the far north of the metropolitan area, and a world apart from the rundown Parc de la Marquesa, which the indefatigable Pepe had to sweep each morning to remove the used condoms and needles before the children arrived.

But Max and the Hospitalet kids didn’t care that the walls of the park were covered in graffiti, that the climbing framed looked like it was about to collapse and that the newsstand was selling soft-core porn, because they had each other.

In a depressing contrast, children on estates often play by themselves while their bored mums and dads flick through their phones.

Of course, Max’s madcap Hospitalet experience was a moment in time, and I’m sure the park is now more “civilised”.

However, even the most subdued of urban centres such as the Perth and Fremantle CBDs throw up the kind of lovely random experiences that you will not have in faraway master-planned communities – bumping into someone you haven’t seen in some time, mini explosions from groups full of joy at being in each other’s company, buskers on sidewalks, political gatherings, and so on.

Ironically, you’re equally unlikely to experience any of this big-city vibrancy in those well-heeled suburbs just a few kilometres from Perth’s CBD because these are where the blocks are biggest and resistance to infilling is greatest (it’s the exact reverse of what it should be, Peet chief executive Brendan Gore notes in the initial WAtoday Big Perth series).

More ironically, the people who live in Perth’s leafiest suburbs, like the ones whose complaints about noise coming from the Camelot Outdoor Cinema in Mosman Park caused it to be shut down, are the ones who cannot wait to get to places like Barcelona, Paris and Rome and experience the vivacious lifestyle that is a direct result of density.

While I still yearn for the big-city lifestyle, which you get in Europe and cities such as New York, San Francisco and Melbourne, this does not appear to be a strong driver in WA, where (as Satterley says) there is still an overwhelming desire for the house-and-land package despite that land being located on the far reaches of the metro area.

As one of the comments on the bottom of WAtoday’s initial Big Perth article notes, so much of our workforce are now fly-in, fly-out that the families don’t really care they live an hour or more from the CBD (or even in Busselton) because they have little interest in Perth and what it has to offer.

They would rather spend their money on four-wheel-drive, their boat and the houseful of the latest electronic equipment.

The pull of the mining industry is so strong (and all that implies from a cultural point of view) that young workers prefer to take up the house-and-land package rather than doing what their counterparts in other industries in Sydney and Melbourne do, which is to live in the inner-city then relocate to the suburbs when children come along.

Of course, the cheapness of land in the outer reaches of Perth is the lure, especially during a housing crisis. Why would anyone spend a chunk of their salary to live in a crappy apartment in the inner-city – for the most part our apartments are terrible and, from a financial point of view, fraught with danger – when the city itself lacks the enticements of a major urban centre?

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Perth is rapidly improving, as the lord mayor proclaimed following his re-election victory at the weekend, but it still has a long way to go before young home buyers would be willing to forego their house-and-land package dream.

Curiously, Max’s glorious Hospitalet interlude reminded me of my own childhood growing up Manning, which was also very blue-collar and, because of the baby boom, bursting with kids.

At every opportunity, we were on the streets, playing cricket and kicking footballs or engaging in games so rough and dangerous that our parents were constantly at the ready with antiseptic and bandages. Broken arms, gashed legs and cracked skulls were badges of honour in mid-60s Manning.

Our city has grown exponentially and racing toward a population of 3.5 million, yet for children it has never felt like a smaller place, as our homes have become entertainment centres, schools as tightly patrolled as military bases and the streets devoid of life.

Those master-planned communities in outer suburbs might make those who live in leafy inner-city locales squirm, but both can be equally lifeless and soulless and lacking in the warmth and spontaneity of places where people are in each other’s (smiling) faces.

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