Transport and job diversity have been identified as two major challenges facing Fremantle, as the port city prepares to double in size under proposed local government reform.
The year-long 'Future Freo' research project was launched on Wednesday morning, and has brought together experts from universities and the public and private sectors in a bid to solve problems and identify opportunities for growth.
"It's going to give Freo some really great evidence-based research that will help us better target the transformation process we're trying to take Fremantle on," mayor Brad Pettitt said.
"It will allow us to get that key information we need to make Fremantle start to work again as a city centre."
The Fremantle mayor said the city needed to avoid "sliding toward being a tourist town" to ensure it would be economically sustainable.
"A real challenge is keeping diverse retail, diverse jobs and also diverse housing in the heart of Fremantle," he said.
"It can't just become a tourist destination. It's got to be a proper real city which is a seven-day-a-week city for locals as well."
In recent years, vacant office spaces have become an increasingly common sight - an issue the council attempted to address by charging landlords double rates. That policy has since been deemed illegal by the State Administrative Tribunal.
Dr Pettitt said improving transport to and from Fremantle was also important, particularly from the south and east.
"As those areas grow, the Cockburn coast areas and certainly the links with Fiona Stanley [Hospital] and the Murdoch Activity Centre, that's not a challenge, rather it's a key opportunity which hasn't yet been realised," he said.
"Fremantle's got the best bones of a city, in many ways. It's transforming from what was once a port city that relied on port workers who have declined through the process of containerisation."
Housing affordability has been identified as a problem, particularly as Fremantle becomes "more expensive and more gentrified", as well as the maintenance of the port city's reputation for arts and culture.
"Part of our job, interestingly, is to keep Fremantle weird and that's at the heart of who we are," Dr Pettitt said.
"It's long been a city of culture, a little bit bohemian and a little bit different and that's what I love about Fremantle."
"How do you keep the arts and culture and all the things people have come to love Fremantle for as that redevelopment process takes place?"
Committee for Perth chief executive Marion Fulker said the Future Freo steering committee would "examine Fremantle's economic, social, demographic and political character".
Similar studies have previously commissioned for the Perth and Peel regions.
