It’s gone from slum to million-dollar suburb, but my Karawara scars remain

When our family stumbled out of a beat-up station wagon on a scorching summer’s day 50 years ago and spied our new state housing home in Karawara, we had high hopes.

This shiny, freshly minted suburb, just a 10-minute drive south of Perth city, was intended as a social housing utopia for the families who couldn’t afford the Great Australian Dream.

Karawara in 1975, the year we arrived, shown from the east, right of Manning road. Credit: State Library of Western Australia

But in a few years it would become a crime-infested slum.

Driving through today you can still see the scars behind the McMansions with their charming, native vistas.

When Karawara was established in 1974, a year before our arrival, it was supposed to revolutionise public housing, based on the Radburn design principles developed in the United States in the late 1920s.

The idea? Pedestrian-friendly housing with no fences and shared green space, with direct paths to local shops and schools, all without roads to cross, creating a contented community.

The planners overlooked one major issue designing Karawara. The Radburn model was meant to be built around the middle class, not the poor. But at one stage almost 80 per cent of the area was state housing.

Dumping the broken, battered and disadvantaged into one neighbourhood enabled crime, unemployment and social dysfunction to flourish.

For many, it created a suffocating sense of shame. We would lie about where we were from.

Canadian physician Gabor Mate, a renowned expert on addiction, trauma, and childhood development, would quit his gig if he spoke to some of the kids who grew up in my hood.

One of the keys to the Radburn concept is that infrastructure should be finished first.

Karawara in 1993 shown from the east, with the suburb on the left. Credit: State Library of Western Australia

But when we moved in, there wasn’t a single park or playground. It stayed like that for years. There was a petrol station, a Chinese restaurant and a squash court, though most of the families couldn’t afford fuel or takeaway, let alone prancing around smacking a small rubber ball.

The architects of the Radburn concept also never envisaged apartments as Karawara had.

By the time the first houses were complete the government of the day had abandoned the model.

But several WA suburbs including Withers, Bentley, Crestwood and South Hedland were constructed using the Radburn concept, with most now “de-Radburnised”.

Planning Institute Australia WA president Vicki Lummer said Karawara failed because planners deviated from the Radburn model.

“There wasn’t enough support to keep the design elements pristine in terms of Karawara, so slowly there were little changes to fencing, like changing the back fences,” she said.

“Once you start allowing design elements to change then the whole thing won’t work.

“It relies on the back fences being open and everybody having eyes on the green space and a big community feel.”

Lummer said there was also too much social housing concentrated in one place, and the flats and infrastructure delays didn’t help.

The shopping centre by 1980. Credit: State Library of Western Australia

“That was not a good design outcome and I think [the flats] were closed quite quickly,” she said.

“People need to use those open spaces as thoroughfares to go somewhere, not just to hang around in … there needs to be a destination.”

By the early 90s, most of the flats in Karawara were bulldozed and most homes were private, though Karawara still has the most state housing in Perth at more than 18 per cent.

It still has dreary parts, but is almost unrecognisable now with an array of cafes and restaurants.

And according to REIWA figures released recently, real estate is booming, with Karawara’s median house price almost doubling in the past year to $1,155,000.

Bourkes senior sales representative Tony De Graaf said the stigma was fading fast for a place close to major transport routes, the freeway and Curtin University; near to but cheaper than Manning and Como.

“Houses on good-sized blocks, close to large parks and I’ve seen families that have sold in Como and come from a small home, and moved in to Karawara and got so much more,” he said.

“Waterford Plaza is a fantastic hub.”

Turns out there was no need to raze Karawara to the ground, then; just keep moving away from the past. On that note, when I asked my Mum, siblings and the friends who also escaped it if they had any old photos of Karawara, no one had a single picture. It’s as if it never existed. Or maybe everyone just wanted to erase it.

The irony is, a sustainable design with more trees, green space, and homes joined by a network of paths, reducing the need to jump into our jalopies, sounds like just what car-dependent Perth needed.

Let’s hope those in charge of alleviating WA’s current housing crisis get it right this time.

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