Fremantle heritage architect Alan Kelsall wrote down his thoughts about the future of Fremantle, and while his paper is long for a blog, I still want to publish it, as it creates food for thought, from a man I highly respect and really like. Let's Talk Freo!
The Strategic Community Plan provides an opportunity to think comprehensively about the role that Fremantle can play in helping the Perth and Peel regions overcome perhaps the most serious planning challenges they face. Essentially these challenges relate to the need to accommodate population growth sustainably. Population growth brings with it many challenges, putting pressure on land, housing, infrastructure, and the environment. It also provides many opportunities, some of which have the potential to bring fundamental and lasting change that will have an impact on not only in the way places look but also on how and where people live, work, study and socialise with one another. How these challenges and opportunities are handled will go a long way towards determining whether Fremantle is a successful, liveable and sustainable city.
Achieving a broad-based consensus.
Creating the conditions for a long-term sustainable regeneration of Fremantle depends on the integration of evidence-based housing, economic, cultural, social, environmental and infrastructure policies. This will not be achieved unless there is broad-based consensus and long-term commitment to it, not only from the City of Fremantle but also from State Government, its departments (which include Main Roads, Fremantle Ports and the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage) and, most importantly, from the building owners, the businesses and institutions, and the people who live and work in Fremantle. Successful integration requires all sides to work together to seek design solutions that can succeed in balancing the needs and benefits of sustainable development to the positive advantage of everyone.
One of the challenges that the Strategic Community Plan will need to overcome is the community's reluctance to support major change. To a degree, this negativity is understandable and is due mainly to the failures of the relatively recent past. These failures were often the result of limited-focus planning decisions, often justified in the name of efficiency, cost and viability, and a need to meet the 'modern' requirements of the occupier. Furthermore, such decisions showed little understanding of the importance of Fremantle's distinctive characteristics, including those that derive from its heritage. There was a lack of appreciation of the cumulative and collective benefits of the diversity and intensity that historically had characterised Fremantle when there were more people living and working in its urban centre and this meant that these attempts at revitalisation rarely created the sort of places envisaged, neither did they achieve the predicted social and economic outcomes. Often, they created further problems, including the loss of places that this and future generations would have valued.
So, while Fremantle must understand the challenges it faces from competing centres, it must also appreciate the advantages it has over these places and resist the temptation to mindlessly mimic them at the risk of losing the very character that makes it uniquely attractive. The Strategic Community Plan should therefore promote a greater appreciation of these advantages and how they can be the basis for a design-led approach to planning and development, building on Fremantle's inherited strengths to offer something very different – a lively walkable city centre with real character and a mix of attractive urban qualities that are not found in more anonymous centres.
Taking a strategic approach to population growth.
Focusing the Strategic Community Plan solely on short-term local issues risks producing outcomes that may provide short-term benefits, but at the cost of missing opportunities to invest in actions for achieving patterns of growth that will contribute to improving the quality of life for this and future generations. As a starting point, The Strategic Community Plan should emphasise the importance of the role that Fremantle can play in helping to accommodate Perth's population growth in the right locations. It should then explain the interconnected benefits that will derive from this more strategic approach to planning. A major benefit would be the potential for well planned growth to re-establish Fremantle as a strategically important regional centre.
The Strategic Community Plan should include an overarching strategic framework based on optimising the use of already developed land and infrastructure to create a higher performing city centre and complementary growth corridors that strengthen links both with adjoining areas and areas beyond Fremantle, thereby establishing a sustainable pattern of growth within the region which will support local and regional economies and re-establish Fremantle as a strategically important regional centre. Not all change will be transformative, and in many places change will occur incrementally. This is especially the case in places where the suburban pattern of development has significant potential for appropriate intensification over time.
However, a sustainable regeneration of Fremantle will not be achieved unless it is planned in ways that that will strengthen and regenerate existing communities by producing places that are affordable and of a quality that people find attractive for both living and working. Growth and change have not always benefitted Fremantle's communities equally. To address this imbalance it is crucial that, where significant development is being planned, it takes into account the different roles that places can play in building strong, resilient and inclusive communities. For example, in the roles that places such as schools, workplaces, community centres and public spaces and parks play in providing opportunities for the community to come together and give their local area a strong and vibrant cultural character that will help secure their long-term future .
The Strategic Community Plan should, therefore, set out a high-level guiding vision for how population growth in Fremantle and the places within it will need to be managed. The vision must respond to regional and local challenges and opportunities and be based on evidence, a sense of local distinctiveness, and community derived objectives.
The vision:
- Fremantle to prosper through sustainable regeneration built on strengthening its unique historic and strategic importance as the port and second city of the Perth metropolitan area.
- Fremantle to play a significant part in developing Perth as a successful, sustainable, international city.
- * Fremantle to be successful through conserving, strengthening, and transforming the places and qualities that give the city its distinct character.
- Fremantle's prosperity to be generated by and filtered down through, a connected network of vibrant and regenerated locally distinct places which have evolved from the city's rich history.
- Fremantle to prosper as a diverse collection of areas and places coming together as a successful city, where each place will have a distinct identity, role and function. All to be well-designed, vibrant and above all attractive places in which to live.
Fremantle is an area of opportunity
The Perth metropolitan area can be characterised as a continuous, mainly suburban, area typically comprising single houses. It is now broadly accepted that it is neither sustainable nor desirable to continue to accommodate the projected population growth in bushland areas on the fringes of the metropolitan area.
However, the current pressure for growth continues to give rise to the perverse position where established suburbs and poorer quality locations that are well-connected to the public transport network remain underutilised at the expense of valuable bushland areas and quality landscapes that have less developed social infrastructure, and where car travel is the only viable transport choice. The overall effect is to encourage an increasingly unbalanced and unsustainable pattern of regional growth. Consequentially, increasing the density of development in suburbs with established infrastructure must be promoted as an essential prerequisite for sustainability.
Opportunities for increasing the density of the existing areas of Perth will vary depending on the existing character of the area. Changing the emphasis in an established car-dependent suburban area from mainly 'suburban' to a more 'urban' character will be difficult without having what will be widely considered to be a negative impact on the area. However, in established urban centres such as Fremantle that already have in place many of the fundamentals needed for sustainable growth, changing the emphasis from suburban to urban would deliver wide-ranging benefits to the local population and to the wider Perth and Peel Regions.
The Strategic Community Plan should provide a strategic framework for accommodating Fremantle's population growth in an inclusive and responsible way, one where every new development makes the most efficient use of land by optimising site capacity. This means ensuring that the form of the development is the most appropriate for the site and that land uses meet identified needs. Making the best use of land will allow more high-quality homes and workspaces to be developed as Fremantle grows, while supporting local communities and creating new ones that can flourish in the future.
The point needs to be emphasised that optimum capacity for a site does not mean the maximum capacity; it may be that a lower density development is the optimum development for the site. Sustainable growth will not be achieved unless the increase in density is done in ways that produces places that are affordable and of a quality that people will find attractive for both living and working. Urban regeneration policies should promote diversity in locations by planning a mix of compatible developments that will work together to stimulate social, economic and market conditions, attracting people to live, work and play in the same area, thereby creating more vibrant places.
Understanding the existing character and context of individual areas is essential in determining how different places may best be developed in the future. An evaluation of the current characteristics of an area, how its social, cultural, physical and environmental history has shaped it and what are its potential opportunities for change will help in understanding its capacity for growth.
Area assessments should be used to identify the areas that are appropriate for extensive, moderate, or limited growth. This analysis should form the basis of a design-led process combining planning, urban design, and architecture. Area assessments and design codes should inform masterplanning, development plans, area-based strategies and regulations on how particular sites should be developed so that new development is successfully integrated with its surrounding area and delivers wider benefits to residents, such as access to shared amenity spaces and a high-quality public realm. Area assessments should define appropriate development capacities and set the conditions where these can be relaxed through regulations that are sensitive to place and the processes of creating good urban design.
Good planning, urban design and architectural outcomes combine to enhance, activate and appropriately frame the public realm. Their massing, scale and layout should help to make public spaces coherent in ways that complement the existing streetscape and surrounding area. It requires particular attention to be given to the design of the parts of a building or public realm that people most frequently see or interact with in terms of its legibility, use, detailing, materials, and location of entrances. Creating a comfortable pedestrian environment is vital.
As change is a fundamental characteristic of Fremantle, respecting character and accommodating change should not be seen as mutually exclusive. Understanding the character of a place should not seek to preserve things in a static way but should ensure that an appropriate balance is struck between the existing fabric and any proposed change. Opportunities for change and transformation should be informed by an understanding of a place's distinctive characteristics, while recognising that not all elements of a place are special and valued.
Good design
There are three dimensions to sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. These dimensions give rise to the need for the planning system to perform various roles which, because they are mutually dependent, should not be undertaken in isolation. The intention should be for the things that make Fremantle's economy strong to be the same as those that make it an attractive and exciting place in which to live and work and visit.
Good urban design is sustainable. The principles of sustainable development therefore need to be embedded in all planning decisions and this will require a highly integrated planning and management approach. The intention should always be to avoid a narrow, single-issue approach, where different authorities, agencies and departments are pursuing separate and uncoordinated programmes and initiatives. This will require all stakeholders to be able to consistently and transparently demonstrate how their plans and policies are based on robust evidence and how they will enable the social, environmental, and economic objectives to be achieved in an overall integrated manner.
The key to achieving this will be the provision by the Strategic Community Plan of an overarching strategic framework that will take a rounded approach to the way areas operate, making them work not only more space-efficiently but also better for the people who use them. This will mean creating higher density places in appropriate locations to get more out of limited land, encouraging a mix of land uses, and co-locating different uses to achieve the critical mass of people needed to support the investment required to build the schools, health services, public transport, and other infrastructure that areas need so they can adapt and work successfully. Places where local amenities are within walking and cycling distance, and where public transport options are available for longer trips, supporting good health, allowing strong communities to develop, and boosting the success of local businesses.
Making the best use of land means directing growth towards the most accessible and well-connected places, making the most efficient use of the existing and future public transport, walking, and cycling networks. It is almost inevitable that there will be tension between projections for road transport and its associated infrastructure, and the pattern of development required for the sustainable growth of the city. While for the foreseeable future cars will have a role to play in the life of Fremantle, it should be possible to reconcile such tensions by redirecting the planning for road transport towards the goal of achieving sustainable growth and delivering urban regeneration. The aim of sustainable growth should not be to increase the capacity of the road network, but instead to decrease the intensity of its use.
The regeneration of the port city
To gain an understanding of how to assess the potential beneficial impact of population growth on the city and region it would be instructive and also prudent to devote some time in looking at how Fremantle got to be the city it is today and how best to plan the city for the future.
The importance of the role played by the port
For most of its history Fremantle was a prosperous urban centre, acknowledged as the second city of the metropolitan area. This history underscores the city's distinct character and its rich heritage. Both are the result of a dynamic history of change and adaptation that has taken place over generations. The changes sometimes transformed the city and explain why the layers of Fremantle's history are often described in terms of its periods of development and regeneration.
The port played a primary role in Fremantle becoming an economically and socially successful urban centre with a distinct character. For most of the city's history the processing, storage and distribution of export and import commodities took place in buildings located near the harbour, providing employment for people from a range of socio-economic groups while building a strong, mutually dependent relationship between the port and city. It was the mix of these elements, enhanced by a regular injection of migrants, that underpinned the social vitality and prosperity which sometimes transformed but always sustained Fremantleʼs port-city identity.
Fremantle's success as a port-city is not only reflected in the buildings which are strongly associated with port-related activities, such as warehouses, shipping offices, customs buildings and woolstores, but also in the number of places such as hotels, theatres, shops, churches, sporting venues and the municipal markets, where socially diverse communities could engage in a wide variety of activities. Its importance as an urban centre brought with it supporting infrastructure and a public transport system that included trams and the railway line that terminated at the centrally located station.
Revitalisation of Fremantle's 'port city' character
This corrosive trend needs to be reversed. It is no simple task. The crucial question that must be answered is: how can Fremantle's 'port city' character be revitalised when the required changes are substantial and the industry that underpinned that character no longer makes the contribution it once did to the life of the city?
Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by population growth to secure a sustainable regeneration of Fremantle should therefore be embraced. A necessary first step in this pursuit would be to abandon the 'anti-urban' practices adopted over the last several decades and concentrate on utilising population growth and the evidence of Fremantle's historic success to achieve a complementary and resilient mix of old and new development of a quality that will persuade people to return to the centre of the city to live, work and socialise.
This will include, perhaps counter intuitively, recognising that although the location of the port was ideal a few decades ago, the changes caused by containerisation have intensified the negative aspects of the port and that these tend now to overwhelm the benefits that accrue from the other maritime uses. These changes have raised serious questions about the port's potential to contribute to the future revitalisation of central Fremantle.
Not only did the introduction of containerisation cause the loss of many of the economic and social benefits previously generated by the working port, but it also caused port operations and cargo handling to require increasingly more harbourside land while also employing fewer people. In addition, the increased use of large trucks to transport the containers caused problems of traffic congestion, noise, and pollution. The frustrations and costs attached to not being able to limit these adverse effects, particularly when there is limited acceptance of them by the community, makes it difficult to positively promote a good quality of life as one of the city's competitive advantages. A further frustration is that it is currently not possible for redevelopment to unlock the potential attractiveness of the harbourside living.
So, when attempting to balance the strategic benefits that come from the container port against those that would accrue from the regeneration of Fremantle, it is crucial to recognise that Fremantle is an urban centre that already has in place many of the fundamentals needed for sustainable growth of strategic importance. These distinctive urban characteristics are finite, making them an irreplaceable resource with the capacity to stimulate growth that will bring with it the potential to deliver wide-ranging, long-term benefits which will help to secure the future of Fremantle, and of the wider Perth and Peel Regions.
The container port does not offer similar benefits. Its focus is exclusively on the handling of containers and the need for greater efficiency. The continuous push for economies of scale has resulted in an ever-increasing size of ship infrastructure. Over the past few decades, the growth of the container port has radically changed Fremantle port and this growth is likely to escalate. Hence the demand for land will inevitably continue to escalate, and it is very likely that this will ultimately generate the need for the container port to be transferred elsewhere.
Relocation of the container port would provide an opportunity for the development of two distinct harbours capable of accommodating two distinct types of growth. This would allow the harbour to continue to be used for shipping, but of a type that would permit some of the harbourside land in North Fremantle in the vicinity North Wharf and Rous Head to be made available for residential development. Following a more collaborative approach such as this has the potential to encourage the reinstatement of a type of mutually supporting interdependency that would be similar that which existed before containerisation.
In summary, allowing the activities of the port to be divided between two locations brings progressively greater opportunities for innovation, expansion and regeneration, thereby creating circumstances capable of not only strengthening the important contribution made by the port to the State but also of using population growth to provide the resilience needed to secure wide-ranging strategic and local benefits for Fremantle and the wider Perth and Peel Regions.
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