Movement and Place

What is Movement and Place?

Roads and streets are complex environments that play an important part in the development of contemporary cities. They are not just for travelling from one place to another, but also a place where people live, socialise and go about doing everyday activities.

Movement and Place is an internationally recognised concept used in other states of Australia and overseas that recognises all roads and streets perform two key roles – movement and place, and that these have different objectives and priorities.

• For movement: To minimise time taken and/or improve travel time reliability to keep people and goods moving as safely and efficiently as possible.
• For place: To create places that that facilitate public interaction, meet people’s needs and serve as a meeting place where people spend time to carry out a variety of activities.

Why are we investigating a Movement and Place Framework for WA?

The sustainable development of towns and cities is an important priority for government. Today, communities face numerous challenges due to changes in demographics, economics, energy, transport and climate.

Roads play an important part in achieving more liveable and vibrant communities as they serve roles for both the movement of people and in place creation. As our population increases, land use intensification increases pressure on these roles and there is a need to be more sophisticated in how we plan for different users and the influence this has on place creation.

The Movement and Place Framework being investigated for Western Australia is intended to facilitate better planning for WA’s future growth, resulting in:

• more coordinated and efficient planning due to a consistent approach to determining and agreeing the movement and place function of our streets
• higher quality urban spaces and more liveable communities, by ensuring balanced consideration and agreement of movement and place priorities for our streets. 

Who is developing the Framework?

The Framework is being developed by the Department of Transport and the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.