McHargian Perth
The Scottish-American landscape architect and ecological planner Ian McHarg pioneered the thought of the city as layers in his influential book Design With Nature (1969).
These drawings reveal Perth as a series of environmental layers – vegetation, surface water, groundwater, soil type, topography – mapped against the projected suburban development of Perth over the coming decades. This study has been achieved through the overlay of layers which are often kept in governmental silos, and not looked at in relationship to one another.
On the ground, these conflicts are playing out through the destruction of many high-value ecological areas and Threatened Ecological Communities. Of particular concern is that, by developable area, around half of Perth’s future development falls within clayey-high-groundwater areas. This means erasure, cutting and filling of the landscape with sand to ensure a level and dry environment for concrete floor slabs and heavyweight construction, at great cost to both ecological and human vulnerability.