IDENTITY OF PERTH

journal article

2014, PERTH’S CRISIS OF IDENTITY
INFLECTION JOURNAL NO.1, MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Perth – City of Defined Perspective Montage updated
1894, 1940, 2014, 2020

In order to write into the city, you need to read the city. The city is like the formation of clouds, it is a complex system interdependent with myriads of layers and causes susceptible to an everchanging condition. Like the ship of Theseus that had each and every one of its wooden parts replaced, this begs the question of whether a particular city remains exactly the same city if its composition is everchanging. Not just by identifying the desires and fears of the city, an analysis of the present character of the city is required to formulate attractors, mathematically defined as a set of physical properties toward which a system tends to evolve to. The city of Perth now in a state of inflection, is in a dire need of such prescription to avoid itself becoming and growing into a Melbourne.

With the methods of urban collective memory collages, this article suggests a framework of change and self-determination that preserves and propels the character and identity of the city.