The Great Australian Dream is dead – at last.
21 Feb 2025
The Great Australian Dream is shifting—whether we like it or not.
In our latest insight, TBB Associate Fiona Atkins explores how Perth’s housing market, urban sprawl, and our deep attachment to the suburban ideal are shaping the future of our city—and why it’s time to rethink what ‘home’ really means.
For generations, Australians were raised to understand that if they worked hard, they too could afford a large block in the suburbs with a house. Our homes were our castles, and neighbours were a safe 15 to 20 metres away across a manicured sprawl of lawn. Fierce competition existed between neighbours over who had the lushest lawn in the street. My own octogenarian neighbours tell me they have been locked in this battle for more than 50 years.
And the Dream worked – for a moment in time. In 1995, Perth’s population was 1.3 million. And this small population enjoyed copious resources, with relatively large pieces of land to live on and never-ending bore water to keep unreasonably green lawns thriving through the heat of summer.
In 1997, former Prime Minister John Howard famously remarked that people did not complain to him about the price of their house going up. Almost thirty years have passed since Howard made this statement, and indeed, homeowners still rarely complain about the prices of their homes increasing. Australia’s love affair with real estate is well documented, and many people, particularly the Baby Boomers and Gen X’s, have reaped the rewards of the housing markets increasing prices.
Nearing thirty years later, in 2025, Perth’s population is now 2.1 million, forecast to increase to 3.5 million by 2050. And our pursuit of the Great Australian Dream is driving our housing market, and the sprawl of our city, into an untenable situation. So desperate are we to give the next generation a childhood that reflects our own, we are willing to travel 50 kilometres each way to and from work. This is human nature. We are drawn to the familiar, and seek to live our lives and raise our families in the way that we were taught. So that the next generation can run around in the sprinklers on your own back lawn on a balmy summer evening. So that you, too, can live the Great Australian Dream, the birthright that we were promised. But clinging to this promise doesn’t just hurt the hip pocket. Not being able to let go of this Dream will affect our State for generations to come.
Every year thousands of people from Perth travel to Europe and come back full of tales of the walkable cities, excellent public transport and dynamic life available in these dense urban centres. But there seems to be a disconnect between what we experience as exciting on holiday, and what we accept as reasonable for our own lives. The people who live in these dynamic cities will often raise their children in units, apartments, or townhouses to enable them to live within a walkable catchment. And these communities have done so for hundreds of years. ‘Apartment’ still seems to be a dirty word in the Perth vernacular, along with ‘common walls’ and ‘shared space’.
An activated street in Portugal
The dangers of sprawling suburbia amidst an arid climate cannot be underestimated. The fires in Los Angeles this northern winter have provided an insight into what happens when Emergency Services are stretched thin across a sprawling metropolis. In a warming world, we would be ignorant to believe this is not a reality that we may soon have to deal with in our own city.
The built form of Perth’s suburbs is not sustainable. A walk through the western suburb of Floreat reveals sprawling lots, many over 1000sqm, rolling lawns kept green throughout the year by bores. Only 7km from the CBD, does this suburb represent the last stand of Perth’s Great Australian Dream? With no subdivision permitted in most of the Garden Suburb since its creation in the 1920s, this is a place lost in time.
To observe Floreat alongside the grid lock on freeways and trains as thousands of people battle their way into the City every day from far flung suburbs is to observe a world gone mad.
Cultural shifts take generations to occur. But any Gen Z will tell you that the once humble goal of owning a stand-alone home on a reasonably sized piece of land close to your family and work is only a representation of a past Australia - and a reminder of something they may never have. Policies that address housing affordability will inevitably lead to a decrease in housing prices. A change in housing and planning policies in Western Australia requires courage from our politicians and lawmakers, as policies that will result in lower housing prices will not be popular with existing homeowners. And our community is still waiting to see such courage from any major political party.
Perhaps what we need is a readjustment of expectations within our younger generations. Is this fair? No. But life, and the property market rarely is. For the sake of a better urban future for all of us, and in lieu of our leaders being motivated to advocate on behalf of their community, perhaps it is time our society started to dream a different dream.
Perth, our city is growing up - and it’s time we did too.
Not being able to let go of this Dream will affect our State for generations to come.
Learn more about how TBB is working together with industry to meet housing needs and tackle the housing crisis here
