BWA | JUL 2026 65 Planning for Growth Through Coastal Projects, New Precincts and Long-Range Land Strategy The City of Wanneroo is one of the clearest examples of a municipality being reshaped by population growth rather than simply responding to it at the margins. Its public-facing materials describe it as one of the fastest-growing local governments in Australia, with around 8,000 new residents a year, a broad geographic footprint and more than 200,000 people already living within the city. That scale matters because it changes the nature of local government work: for Wanneroo, planning, infrastructure, recreation and coastal activation are not peripheral issues, but central questions about how a much larger city should be formed over time. That is why the East Wanneroo planning framework is so important. The City says the East Wanneroo District Structure Plan, released by the Minister for Planning in 2021, provides a long-term vision for more than 8,300 hectares of land, with capacity for 150,000 residents, 50,000 dwellings and up to 20,000 jobs. Separate City updates add that the district will eventually include dozens of schools and be built out over multiple decades. This is not a routine rezoning exercise. It is one of the most significant long-range suburban growth frameworks in metropolitan Perth. That long horizon also says something important about the City’s role. Wanneroo is not merely approving development application by application; it is helping sequence the growth of an entire future district. The City’s East Wanneroo pages explicitly say that development will occur in stages over decades, which means
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