Northbridge: Perth's Creative and Cultural Hub

Northbridge, the inner suburb immediately north of the Perth CBD that the cultural institutions of the Perth Cultural Centre, the independent restaurants and the bars of the William and the James Streets, and the creative industries of the small studios and the galleries create as the most culturally diverse and the most socially active neighbourhood in the Perth metropolitan area, provides the creative and the nightlife hub that the Perth community uses as the central gathering place for the arts, the food, the entertainment, and the community events that the urban village character of Northbridge sustains in the density and the diversity of the uses that the inner-city suburb accommodates alongside the residential population whose demand for the walkable urban neighbourhood the Northbridge development has created. The suburb's transformation from the post-war era's more working-class and the residential character to the entertainment and the cultural precinct that the restaurant migration, the arts institutions, and the nightlife venues have created over the three decades of gentrification reflects the inner-city urban transformation that the population growth and the changing cultural preferences of the Perth younger professional have sustained in the inner suburbs closest to the CBD.

The Perth Cultural Centre within Northbridge, the pedestrianised public space that the Western Australian Museum, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the State Library, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), and the Northbridge Piazza frame as the public cultural precinct, provides the institutional anchor that sustains the cultural identity of Northbridge as the place where the arts and the learning happen in the concentrated campus of the major state cultural institutions. The Art Gallery of Western Australia's permanent collection of the Australian and the Western Australian art, including the Indigenous art of the Kimberley and the desert regions that the state's connection to the remote Aboriginal communities creates the collecting opportunity for, and the international art that the gallery has assembled across the decades of the collecting programs, provides the visual arts resource that the gallery's position in the Cultural Centre makes the accessible and the free attraction that the Perth public uses for the regular cultural engagement.

The James Street dining precinct and the Beaufort Street corridor that extends the Northbridge food culture north into the Mount Lawley and the Highgate neighbourhoods, creating the continuous dining and the bar strip that the Perth cosmopolitan food culture has developed from the restaurant migration that the Italian, the Greek, the Vietnamese, and the Japanese communities established in the Northbridge streets and that the subsequent waves of the culinary innovation and the café culture have built upon, provides the food diversity and the restaurant density that sustains Northbridge as the premier dining precinct of the Perth metropolitan area. The diversity of the Northbridge dining, from the traditional Italian and the Greek restaurants of the established immigrant communities to the contemporary Australian and the fusion restaurants that the current cohort of the Perth chefs has opened in the streets that the restaurant culture of Northbridge sustains as the city's food innovation hub, creates the culinary landscape that the Perth food lover navigates for the quality and the diversity that the Northbridge concentration provides.

The Perth nightlife of Northbridge, the late-night bars and the music venues that the entertainment culture of the inner suburb sustains for the after-dinner crowd and the dedicated nightlife visitor who uses Northbridge as the Perth entertainment destination whose concentration of the live music, the DJ venues, and the bar culture creates the Perth nightlife in the single accessible precinct, provides the entertainment economy that the Perth hospitality sector relies on Northbridge to generate as the concentrated spending destination that the nightlife visitor uses rather than the dispersed suburban entertainment that the metropolitan sprawl of Perth would otherwise fragment the nightlife market into. The music venues of Northbridge, from the intimate live music pubs to the larger stages that the mid-size touring acts use for the Perth shows, sustain the live music culture that the Perth community values as the most important entertainment form that the city's nightlife infrastructure should support.

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