FAQs

Green open space refers to the open green areas, owned or managed by the City of Perth, that are primarily used to meet the passive and active recreational needs of City residents, workers and visitors.  It includes small and large public parks, gardens, reserves and the river foreshore. 

Due to their size, location and importance, the following open spaces are also included as green open space, although they are not owned by the City:

• Kings Park
• Pelican Point, Crawley- Bush Forever Site
• Matilda Bay Reserve

As the City of Perth does not own these spaces it cannot make any changes or enhancements within them, but can advocate to improve the edges and connections to them.

The City of Perth (City) has an extensive network of green open spaces comprised of:

• 50 open spaces
• 547 Ha
• 41% of the city’s land area 

Please click here to view the City's network of green open spaces. 

The City’s green open space network is made up of a range of spaces of varying size, use and function. Smaller parks offer day-to-day passive recreational opportunities. Larger spaces provide for organized sport and important festivals and events.

Please click here for details of the City’s green open space hierarchy. 

Lockdowns and other restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted on how people use and think about open space.  Across the globe, cities have been monitoring these changes.  Some key findings include:

• people spent more time outside, mostly to exercise, play and connect with people outside of their households
• local parks had one of the highest levels of community use and appreciation
• a lack of adequate space for social distancing within open space created safety concerns for users.

The pandemic has created an unprecedented demand for open space.  This brings new challenges for the planning, design and management of these important community assets to ensure they continue to support the health and well-being of all city dwellers.

Our city is changing and this is creating challenges for how we plan, design and manage green open space. 

Our population is set to grow. The City has ambitious targets to increase the number of people living and working here. Much of this growth will be accommodated in high density development with limited access to private open space.  As the city continues to grow, there will be greater demand on the open space network to meet the active and passive recreational needs of our community, with less open space available per person. 

Please click here to view the allocation of green open space per person in the City of Perth. 

Our climate is changing. We need to harness the potential of green open space to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change and manage it to ensure its resilience and environmental quality.

The Open Space Framework will set out high level initiatives and actions for the future provision, design and management of open space, across the city and each of its six neighbourhoods, over the next 10-15 years. The Framework will be an important tool to guide the provision of an appropriate amount, distribution and mix of open spaces that meet changing community needs and expectations.