Councils, Architects and Historians Weigh In on Perth's Duplicate Image Problem

The same aerial shot of the Swan River foreshore. The same sunset over Elizabeth Quay. The same crane-dotted skyline photographed from Kings Park. Perth's government agencies, development authorities and tourism bodies have relied on a narrow bank of recycled images for years, and a loose coalition of designers, archivists and civic advocates now says the practice is doing real damage to how the city understands and presents itself.

The issue has sharpened in 2026 as several high-profile projects — including the state government's Indian Ocean Strategy communications rollout and updated planning documents for the Metronet Stage 2 corridors — went to print carrying images that observers say bear little resemblance to the suburbs they purport to represent. Belmont, Midland and Armadale all featured in Metronet corridor studies this year, yet advocates argue the accompanying imagery defaulted to generic city-centre stock rather than photographs of those communities.

Why the Images Matter

Urban designers and community planners argue that authentic local imagery is not cosmetic — it shapes how residents, investors and policymakers perceive a neighbourhood's value and trajectory. When a planning brief for a station precinct in Midland opens with a photograph of a glass tower in the Perth CBD, the message sent to Midland residents about whose future is being imagined is a pointed one.

The City of Perth, which administers the Northbridge and Perth CBD precincts, updated its digital asset library in early 2025 as part of a broader communications refresh. That project drew on photography sourced from local practitioners, with an emphasis on street-level imagery from Murray Street and the Yagan Square precinct. The effort was noted by professional bodies in the built environment sector as a constructive step, though several observers have pointed out the refresh did not extend to materials produced by state-level agencies operating in outer suburbs.

The State Records Office of Western Australia, based on Alexander Drive in Bassendean, holds tens of thousands of historical photographs of Perth suburbs dating back to the nineteenth century. Archivists there have flagged on multiple occasions that contemporary government publications routinely overlook this resource, instead licensing generic imagery from international stock platforms. The cost differential is significant: licensing a single commercial stock image through major international platforms can run to several hundred dollars per use, while community-sourced and archival material is often available at minimal cost through institutional agreements.

The Design Review Panel administered by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage has discussed visual representation standards as a side issue in at least two public forums held in the first half of 2026, according to agendas published on the department's website. The question is whether those conversations translate into policy with teeth.

What Happens Next

Several pathways are being discussed across civic and professional circles. The Australian Institute of Architects' Western Australia chapter, headquartered in West Perth, has previously advocated for government procurement rules that preference locally produced creative content. Extending that logic to photography and visual assets would require an amendment to existing procurement guidelines — a step that would need sign-off from the Department of Finance.

The City of Stirling, which covers suburbs including Scarborough, Innaloo and Mount Lawley and is one of Perth's largest local government areas by population, is understood to be reviewing its own communications asset library ahead of a council strategy refresh expected later this year. How that review treats the duplicate image question will be watched closely by neighbouring councils.

For community groups and residents trying to get authentic representations of their suburbs into official materials, the most practical immediate step involves engaging directly with local government communications teams during public consultation periods — when agencies are actively building project-specific visual libraries — rather than after documents have gone to production. The window is narrow, but several neighbourhood groups in Armadale and the Canning Vale corridor have already demonstrated it can be used effectively.

The broader debate sits alongside wider questions Perth is working through about growth, identity and whose version of the city gets projected outward. With the state's population continuing to expand rapidly on the back of resources sector demand and immigration, the gap between the city as photographed and the city as lived is only getting wider.