Paul Ritter
1925 - 2010
Paul Ritter (6 April 1925, Prague – 14 June 2010, Perth) was a Western Australian architect, town planner, sociologist, artist and author. In his roles as the first city planner of the state's capital, Perth and subsequent two decades spent serving as Councillor for East Perth, Ritter is remembered as a brilliant, eccentric and often controversial public figure who consistently fought to preserve and enhance the character and vitality of the central city district. Today he is primarily remembered for his involvement in preserving many of Perth's historic buildings at a time of rapid redevelopment and preventing the construction of an eight-lane freeway on the Swan River foreshore. Ritter's later career was blighted by a controversial 3-year prison sentence for making misleading statements in applying for export marketing grants.
Ritter was born in Prague on 6 April 1925 to Jewish parents Carl Ritter and Elsa (née Schnabel). In 1939, at the age of 13, Ritter was evacuated from Czechoslovakia to England via the Kindertransport. He graduated as a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Civic Design from the University of Liverpool. In 1946 he married fellow-graduate Jean Patricia Finch with whom he eventually had five daughters and two sons.
Throughout their life the couple would combine their talents, shared interests and idealism in an enduring professional partnership which they named 'The Planned Environment and Educreation Research (PEER) Institute'. Together they wrote and published their first book in 1959 entitled, 'The Free Family', describing how they applied their beliefs about child rearing to their own children.
Chief planner at the City of Perth
In the early 1960s Ritter was teaching at the Nottingham School of Architecture while acquiring an international reputation as an architectural theorist with new ideas and unquenchable energy. His 1964 book, Planning for Man and Motor contained his theories and advocacy for the separation of pedestrians and cars and brought him to the attention of the global planning profession. Mr W. A. McI. Green, Town Clerk of Perth City Council (PCC), invited Ritter to head the council's newly formed Department of Planning. Ritter accepted, and after migrating with his family to Perth in late 1964, began work as Perth's first City Planner in May of the following year.
Ritter’s tenure as chief planner was short and turbulent and in 1967 he was controversially sacked. Ostensibly Ritter was accused by the City Council of failing to produce the statutory planning scheme that was required by the Metropolitan Region Planning Authority (MRPA). The MRPA had been formed in 1963 to convert the Stephenson-Hepburn Plan for the Metropolitan Region into a statutory scheme for the whole of Perth. The relationship between the MRPA's Chief Planner, David Carr and Paul Ritter soon began to deteriorate. Perth historian Jenny Gregory believes the falling out was due to the state government's (and Carr's) view that the role of the PCC was to fill in the details of the overarching metropolitan scheme. Ritter himself insisted that, despite some personal animosity, "the one and only major contention" between the two was regarding the Government Freeway Plan, which Carr backed and Ritter vigorously opposed. Despite substantial differences that resulted in his dismissal shortly afterwards, Ritter convinced the council to reverse an earlier resolution supporting the proposal and instead to oppose it. This is now considered Ritter's greatest legacy, for the plan would have run a freeway down the Swan River foreshore to surround the city with what architect Theodore Osmundson described as an "iron collar [which] can only eventually choke the central city to death".
Ritter successfully argued that a freeway along the foreshore would cut the city off from the waterfront and was unnecessary in terms of traffic volumes, and that the proposed northern freeway leg would be sufficient to carry commuter traffic. Ritter claimed that this challenge to Carr's authority was not lightly forgiven, but in spite of this the two individuals "cooperated on virtually all other issues".
To some he was a maverick planner, a progressive modernist whose radical ideas took Perth by storm. Yet Ritter saw himself as a counter to the decisive and destructive influence of economic rationalism on the planning and growth of the city at the time.
Ritter's ideas and achievements left a profound and enduring legacy. He was responsible for 'a far sighted parking plan’ and multilevel structure that took advantage of the central city topography to lay the foundations for a vibrant pedestrian precinct with walkways linking the Northbridge cultural centre via arcades to St Georges Terrace. He worked to preserve many historic buildings through a variety of means, including the alteration of plot-ratio requirements, was partially successful in limiting reflective glass on skyscraper facades and participated in the successful campaign to save the Barracks Arch from demolition. He held frequent public meetings to persuade people of his ideas and drew up a town-planning scheme for Perth.
Following his sacking in 1967 a committee comprising Sir Walter Murdoch, Mary Durack Miller, Stella O'Keefe, Professor E. K. Braybrooke, Professor G. C. Bolton, Thomas Wardle and Dr. R. B. Lefroy was formed to inquire into the dismissal. He later successfully sued for wrongful dismissal.
Councillor
With his public profile bolstered by his dismissal, five months later Ritter was able to return to the City of Perth as a councillor for the East Ward. From 1968 to 1986 he would become a prominent figure during the decline and subsequent transition of East Perth. As a councillor he showed concern for the amenity of East Perth, encouraging improvements to programs of street-sweeping and rubbish-removal, and seeking to involve the community in the decision-making process. As a member of the city's town planning committee he sought to hasten the construction of the city by-pass to overcome the deterioration of buildings in the freeway reserve and the exodus of business and residents. Ritter continued to self-publish newsletters and pamphlets outlining his ideas. "For too long", he wrote in one, "planning East Perth was delayed because of Railway and Freeway uncertainties. Now that these have been overcome and we are pressing for special efforts to give the sort of attention that has been lavished on West Perth to East Perth planning".
Architect, consultant and ministerial adviser
In 1970 Paul Ritter was involved in the design of the Crestwood Estate in Thornlie, Western Australia. To this he introduced Radburn principles. Every house sits on the edge of a park, and movement on foot through the development is possible without encountering vehicles. In 1971 he was appointed by the state Minister for Town Planning (H. E. Graham) to report on the MRPA proposals for the Corridor Plan for Perth; however his report had little impact. He spent 36 years as a ministerial adviser. He was a member of the Committee for a Vision of Perth in 2029. He also produced the "1999 Ideas Plan" for the City of Perth, was involved with the "Perth in 2029" report and created a series of 13 half-hour Channel 31 TV programs about the report, entitled "The Sensitive Future".
Imprisonment
In the late 1980s Ritter served 16 months of a 3-year prison sentence in Fremantle and Karnet prisons for fraudulently attempting to obtain Commonwealth export grants; he maintained that he had been framed. After his release he published Curses From Canberra: public service conspiracy and the failure of democratic safeguards and a collection of the poems and artwork he produced while serving his sentence. "They put me there against my will" he wrote, "There will be no apology / Prison is a great big phoney / The theory for it is pure baloney" and "Errors that placed me in this cage / Are still the subject of some rage."
Other work
In Nottingham and later in Perth, he and Jean Ritter ran several exhibitions called "The Child's Eye View", where everything was built 2.5 times normal size to show adults what it was like to be a child.
In the Stirling Gardens in central Perth, his sculpture "The Ore Obelisk" (1971) symbolised the diversity of mining industry from which Western Australia's wealth is largely derived.
Biography courtesy of Eli Rabinowitz
