Urban Planning as Colonial Marketing Strategy for the Swan River Settlement, Western Australia

The creation of culturally meaningful landscapes through the naming, mapping and planning of places
functioned to assert colonial ownership over the vast, seemingly unclaimed spaces of Western Australia. It
also formed the backdrop upon which towns like Fremantle could be established, creating a sense of
familiarity and belonging in an otherwise hostile environment. By exporting a vision of an established and
recognisably civilised British landscape to prospective settlers and investors, the sense of spatial insecurity
associated with such an isolated, unknown place was countered. To this end, the colonial government
fabricated the image of an attractive, ideal urban center at Fremantle, well before there were people or funds
to support such developments. By treating the town and graphic representations of the landscape as artefacts,
the ways the colonial government endeavored to use town planning as a marketing strategy to attract settlers
and investors to the Swan River Settlement, is illuminated.