Perth, the city that sleeps

Having been here for a few months, people tend to post the same question over and over again – ‘How do you find Perth?’ I bet I’ll be getting tons of these questions when I get back home end of the year, and my answer is still relatively the same, ‘The city that sleeps.’ The West Australian paper has an interesting article on Perth as a city and its lifestyle, and it says:

I’m not quite convince with the motor vehicle part but he was right about the “funk factor”, my first few weeks in Australia was a horrible experience, I couldn’t imagine myself living in a ‘City’ that literally shuts itself up before 5, according to one of my lecturers, it used to be some kind of Union law requiring every shops in Western Australia to have their door shut before 5, but it appears that they are trying very hard to reverse this trend currently.

The other thing about Perth is the architecture, unlike Sydney and Melbourne, Perth lacked an architecture identity and ironically they’re the richest state in Australia, according to my lecturer, Perthlings prefer to spend their money on health care, education… anything but architecture, and when they do, they do it with a big bang – the iconic Perth Convention Center.

Demographer Bernard Salt said Perth was easily the most suburban of Australia’s capital cities, largely because much of Perth had been developed post-World War II in the era of the motor vehicle. He said Perth lacked the inner-city “funk factor” of Melbourne and Sydney and therefore there had not been a lure for people to live closer to the city, though that had started to be addressed in suburbs such as Subiaco and Northbridge.

Because of its flat and extended design, and many question its bland and unimaginative architecture, it is jocularly referred to as ‘The Hay Shed’ or better known as ‘The cockroach’ by the locals because of its shape.