ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how a range of visual and textual sources can be used separately and together to provide an understanding of the nature of suburban change over the last century. The somewhat idiosyncratic lens through which these data sources are viewed is that of the back lanes of a single suburb of metropolitan Perth. However, this chapter seeks to demonstrate the more general value and the complementarity of data sources that are both historic and contemporary and visual and verbal. The visual and textual sources brought together in this case study are: first person observation; google street view; aerial photography; oral history; newspapers; planning documents; and real estate signboards and their related web entries. These data sources are complementary and mutually supportive since the visual material provides, albeit selective, evidence of actual structural and land use change while the written sources provide, (equally selective) indications of people's opinions and emotions with regard to the back lanes and therefore of their changing reputations over time. This written information can then be juxtaposed with the visual data to consider the extent to which problems have been resolved or future visions realised.
