Sprawling Sydney

For some time, I’ve told anyone who’ll listen that Sydney begins at Campbelltown, the Shire, and Penrith. The National Map gives some lie to that.

I’ve never been sure what to think of Sydney. I’ve lived a few hours down the road from this heaving mess of Australia’s largest city my whole life. I’ve never felt like I liked the place and yet it draws you in — to the harbour, the shops, the restaurants, the entertainments, the conferences and meetings.

Coming from the south, I’ve always claimed Sydney starts at Campbelltown, the (Sutherland) Shire, and Penrith. Up to those points, I thought, there was still a quality of rurality that set here apart from there.

Embedded above is an extract from the Government’s National Map, which allows users to overlay all sorts of interesting and useful data. This is the default view centred on Sydney. The map has an interesting quality of showing up, more clearly than I’ve ever seen it, Sydney’s urban spread.

The city now seems to extend out from the harbour in an inexorable spread northwest and southwest. There are some 80 kilometres of cleared land from Bargo-Tahmoor to past Windsor.

What makes this map so interesting and stark is the contrasting colour of cleared land and housing (the muddy brown tending to orange) compared to more familiar views presented by tools such as Google Maps, egs below.

The Google Earth version of Sydney blends more green through the southwest and northwest urban areas, tingeing it largely the same shade as the farmland in the west and far south west of the images. The Google Map of the same view practices this erasure even more prominently, showing only designated national parks in green.

To be sure, the dates that the respective images were captured may play a part in how green or otherwise particular segments are, given Australia’s cycle of drought and heavy rain, but to me the images show something quite stark about Sydney’s urban spread. It looks like I’ll now have to concede that the Wollondilly region (Picton, Tahmoor, Bargo et al) is indeed part of Sydney, especially as developments around Campbelltown continue apace.