When my namesake ancestor arrived in Perth in 1829 there were a few hundred people living here. There are now over a 1.4 million, and it's rising by 1.4% per year. These new people have to fit somewhere, so swamps and rubbish tips are being turned into housing estates. There's also been a more recent change from low to high density housing in existing suburbs, leading to quaint little houses on large blocks begin replaced by impersonal large houses on small subdivisions of the aforementioned blocks. Something similar is described with scary photographs in the McMansion Invasion.