Is practice aligned with the principles? Implementing New Urbanism in Perth, Western Australia Ryan Falconer a,n , Peter Newman b,1 , Billie Giles-Corti c,2 a Sinclair Knight Merz, Level 7, Durack Centre, 263 Adelaide Terrace, Perth, WA 6000, Australia b Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute (CUSP), 3 Pakenham Street, Fremantle, WA 6160, Australia c Centre for the Built Environment and Health, The University of Western Australia, M707, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia article info Available online 24 February 2010 Keywords: New Urbanism Liveable neighbourhoods Car dependence Perth abstract New Urbanism is a recent American reform approach to urban development, which attempts to reduce car dependence through traditional design qualities such as connected streets with paths, higher density and mix with local centres. The Western Australian State Government has developed ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’, which is a context-specific design code based on new Urbanist principles. This design code has been applied in the development of several dozen new neighbourhoods in Perth over the last decade. This paper shows that these developments do create more local walking but are no different to conventional suburban development in their regional car dependence. The causes of this are pursued in terms of a gap between principles and practice. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction New Urbanism is posited as a new approach to suburban development, which could reduce car dependence by creating pedestrian-friendly environments (Duany et al., 2000; Farr, 2008; Flint, 2006). Liveable Neighbourhoods (LN), an operational development policy in use in Perth, is a Western Australian interpretation of New Urbanism. It is intended to replace conventional design codes that have facilitated car dependence and sprawl over the last 50 or so years. This paper presents the findings of new research that has evaluated the transport sustainability of new neighbourhoods designed in accordance with the LN policy compared with conventionally designed neighbourhoods. Moreover, it critiques the application of LN by analysing inconsistencies between the principles that underlie the policy and practice. The research was premised by two of the key objectives of the LN design code: to reduce car dependence by providing for local access to jobs, services and recreation, and to better integrate new development with existing urban infrastructure (particularly public transport services). The following section provides a brief background to New Urbanism and the influence of this urban reform approach on the development of the LN policy. Section 3 describes the study methodology, which included a travel survey and environmental analyses. The key results of the study are presented in Section 4 and are subsequently discussed in Section 5. 2. Background In 1993, the Congress for the New Urbanism was founded by six architects: Peter Calthorpe, Andre ´ s Duany, Daniel Solomon, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Stephanos Poly- zoides. The movement advocates design qualities reflective of small US cities circa 1900–1920 (Beatley, 2004; Frank et al., 2004). These qualities include local street network connectivity, provi- sion of sidewalks, mixing of uses and increased development densities, all of which are argued to counteract sprawl and reduce car dependence. In principle, New Urbanism anticipates a high degree of regional integration (including integration of new neighbourhoods with regional transit services), such that people are not beholden to cars to fulfil their transport needs. New Urbanism has spread globally, particularly to car dependent cities like Perth in Western Australia where the State government has recognised the need for redress of conventional development policy. In February 1998, a trial began of a design code called ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’ (LN), a version of the Australian Model Code for Residential Development 1995 that was amended to be more closely aligned with New Urbanist principles. Key components of this code are shown in Table 1. It was formulated and reviewed by a steering committee representing government and industry, and public submissions ARTICLE IN PRESS Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tranpol Transport Policy 0967-070X/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tranpol.2010.01.014 n Corresponding author. Tel.: + 61 8 9469 4312; fax: + 61 8 9469 4488. E-mail addresses: RFalconer@skm.com.au (R. Falconer), p.newman@curtin.edu.au (P. Newman), Billie.Giles-Corti@uwa.edu.au (B. Giles-Corti). 1 Tel.: + 61 8 9266 9030. 2 Tel.: + 61 8 6488 1257. Transport Policy 17 (2010) 287–294