Urban sprawl increasingly eats into our coastal and bushland around Perth every year. Far from building the Australian dream of the future, we have created houses crammed together in soulless and remote suburbs, whilst our inner urban areas lack the required amenity and infrastructure to support high density living. Clearly, intervention is needed.

Canning City Centre has for years been identified as one of Perth’s key Strategic Metropolitan Centres. Despite this State policy, there is still no clear government mandate to drive the much needed city centric urban renewal of this inner urban Transit Oriented Development location.

It is within this context Canning is investing significant resources into leading planned change with a 10 year $76 million Regeneration Program. A proactive and planning friendly approach to facilitating development has attracted private sector investment with a pipeline of future development to follow.

To capitalise on this incremental development activity, the City has shifted focus from being a passive player in the process to one of leadership. Establishing partnerships with major stakeholders; state agencies; and private sector developers, whilst seeking to manage future infrastructure demands and using our land and other assets to stimulate investment.

The City has become a leader in driving real SMART city initiatives focused on creating greater amenity for the community, exemplified by being awarded a federal grant of $1M in 2018, only one of two LGAs in WA to gain funding. People are at the centre of our SMART strategy.

There were various actions undertaken through the process, some outside the comfort zone of local authorities, which created both challenges and opportunities to ensure our vision becomes a reality.

Abstract from ICTC 2019 Conference
Author: Gary McCullough, Senior Project Leader – Canning City Centre, City of Canning