Networking our cities

Recently Mathieu Helie suggested using networks as a new method of focusing urban development in the right locations - he suggested the following proscriptive standards:

• "For private development: you may build on any available part of the network so long as you replace the part you used up by extending the network around your new block.
• For community development: any time a part of the network becomes too complicated (for example it takes more than 4 steps to get out of a sector), extend the boundary of that part with a higher capacity road (a boulevard)."

Before we look into this, let us first consider the current planning system post 1940s, which is of course based on the zoning of land as a precursor to urban development. Perth is known for having a very successful regional scheme that covers the metropolitan region - it has been very successful in shaping Perth's urban development into corridors well serviced by transport networks and utilities. It has been so successful that Perth is now well known for having one of the lowest densities of any City, and for providing more roads per capita than any other City. The growth is coordinated with a broad-brush at the regional level.

At the district level, structure plans set up the more detailed framework within which development is to occur. Ultimately, development fills in the urban-zoned land to create a contiguous urban district. In the meantime, the half-developed areas look like this:

The result is a series of disconnected developments. There is no focus, the town centre is centred on a main street isolated from the remainder, with poor connectivity. It will be decades before the sections all connect, before an effective public transport system can be set up, and decades before the district attains the kind of population that supports intensification of central areas, and decades before local employment opportunities begin to take over from far-flung employment areas located at the ends of railways and freeways. Even then, it is unlikely that this form of ad hoc urbanisation will form the kind of diverse urban areas found in traditional suburbs.


Pre-1940s, limited access to motor vehicles meant urban development was necessarily constrained to existing transport routes. New development was undertaken in conjunction with extensions to tram networks, such that Cities were more or less developed along the same principles suggested by Mathieu.


Perth already has the framework in place to provide for growth of a network, with only surprisingly-minor tweaking of the existing system. The main changes needed are:

• Get rid of the "Urban" zone. Instead, identify land suitable for urban development (i.e. excluding environmentally-significant areas, main agricultural areas, regional freight routes, and so on;


• Create the rules that only allow subdivision and development where it connects to and extends an existing network (roads, public transport and utilities); and


• Simplify local planning regulations to provide for greater flexibility for land uses, so that extended networks can develop a mix of uses organically.

The benefits of such a system include much greater efficiency of the provision of services, greater certainty for owners and developers, and the development of a flexible City network that has a greater capacity to respond to social and economic changes.