Chapter Three. Beyond the Bicentennial
The emergence of Sydney as a global city, and new strategies for expanding infrastructure to support a booming population.
The 1990s
In the 1990s, the New South Wales Government became increasingly involved with urban governance. In 1995, it released the metropolitan plan Cities for the 21st Century, focusing on equity, efficiency, environmental quality and livability. That same year, the government introduced the concept of a ‘Greater Metropolitan Region’ stretching from Newcastle to Wollongong, and three years later came Shaping our Cities, closely followed by a companion report, Shaping Western Sydney.
These initiatives all reflected the critical and growing need to address population growth and urban consolidation. They also flowed on from the internationally influential Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future report published by the United Nations in 1987, which highlighted the themes of intergenerational equity, resource conservation and sustainability.
In New South Wales, neo-liberal political consensus was moving away from large-scale state investment and social welfare towards deregulation and privatisation facilitated by the State Government. Infrastructure — rail and motorways — became a central priority. It was in this context that the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was constructed to complement the eight lanes of the Harbour Bridge, which was, by then, deficient in coping with traffic demands. The Sydney Orbital — a series of ring roads and arteries through the metropolitan area of Sydney — was being implemented. Central city planning and strategic planning in key suburban locations were now intended to make Sydney a globally competitive functional city.
The 1990s saw Sydney become a metropolis of projects driven by private capital with centralised state authorities endeavouring to guide development consent via local councils. Amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act were introduced to facilitate redevelopment of Pyrmont and Ultimo via higher-density, mixed-use residential and commercial conversion of heritage industrial building stock. The State Government, through the Central Sydney Planning Commission, also became more closely involved with the design process of major CBD developments.
Under the stewardship of newly elected Lord Mayor Frank Sartor, Sydney City Council’s Living City agenda of 1994 sought to implement a vision of Sydney as a dynamic 24-hour city offering quality public spaces and facilities for a much larger residential population. The energy with which these reforms were pursued led to a number of innovative projects — some in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect — and transformed the City Centre into a more vibrant urban environment of commerce, residential and leisure activity.
The construction of Fox Studios Australia at revamped Moore Park in the late ’90s illustrates the wider recognition of the cultural economy and the diversification of Sydney as a city sufficiently mature and capable of engaging with dynamic international markets and creative industries.
Design excellence’ for all new public buildings and the insistence of a competition process to ensure higherquality architecture broke the monopoly of larger, well-established, developer-preferred architecture practices and opened the gates to younger, smaller and more innovative architects, as well as the big-name internationals. This represented a major change from the design agnosticism of the City Council in the years prior and displayed a commitment to elevate the quality of architecture and the public realm.
The twenty-first century — Sydney as a global city
The ebullience that Sydneysiders experienced when winning the bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games reflected the view that theirs was a global city that had long shed its status as a colonial backwater. Although Australians were yet to embrace the idea of a republic, the perception of Sydney as an aspirational and independent global city was now well established beyond its shores. The Olympic Games was a catalyst for major upgrades to Central Sydney’s public infrastructure and public realm, including footpaths and many buildings.
The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority consolidated the various state corporations operating in Central Sydney to assist with the redevelopment, while the transformation of a semi-industrialised wasteland at Homebush — the site of the Olympic Games — spurred an injection of investment to create a mixed-use precinct for residential and commercial activities, which are still to be fully realised.
With these redevelopments came the growing awareness of the significance of Sydney’s waterfront, not just in Central Sydney but all the way up the Parramatta River. Sydney’s heritage as a port city with industry occupying valuable waterfront and polluting the waterways was no longer an acceptable proposition. At a cost of $30 million, the State Government remediated toxic waste from what were previously industrial sites at Homebush Bay in readiness for the Olympic Games.
While still not fully realised, Premier Bob Carr’s vision of a publicly accessible water’s edge from the eastern harbour to Parramatta has initiated much privately owned harbour foreshore to be unlocked and given back to the people of Sydney. The 320 kilometre long harbour frontage from South Head all the way to Parramatta and back to North Head is an extraordinary public asset and one that subsequent governments have set about making more accessible to the public and protecting from environmental degradation. Significantly, the full extent of Sydney’s waterfront from Pittwater to Port Hacking is three times that length.
In 2005, the New South Wales Department of Planning released a 25-year strategy called City of Cities: A Plan for Sydney’s Future, which established targets for environmental quality, employment levels and locations, transportation networks and links, regional open space, and housing densities and affordability.
The City of Cities 25-year strategy was a comprehensive document that detailed the need for a compact city, sub-regional activity centres, transportation and land use integration, the critical role of infrastructure, urban design and concerns about car dependence, among other things. The result of this document was a robust vision of a multi-centred (or polycentric) metropolis.
Two years later, the State Government launched a master plan competition for the redevelopment of the Patrick Stevedores site at East Darling Harbour, a stone’s throw from central Sydney and a strategic 22 hectares of prime harbour frontage. This came to be known as Barangaroo and included Carr’s tenet of public access to the waterfront. While much controversy surrounded the development, its conversion from an industrial private waterfront facility to a publicly accessible precinct is thoroughly justified and reflects the continuing need for governments to make environmentally and financially sustainable urban investments in the city.
Suburban development in Sydney remains driven by population increase and urban consolidation objectives. The City of Cities plan proposed 70 per cent of new housing by 2031 within the metropolitan footprint. Urban consolidation remains generally intact. While this policy was introduced to optimise existing infrastructure for financial reasons, it resulted in improved public transport patronage and urban design.
What commenced with an increased propensity for dual occupancy developed into rezoning of surplus government land, higher dwelling density targets in new-release areas and multi-unit dwelling development in areas rezoned by local councils. Master planned communities have become a theme of the property market in inner and outer Sydney.
Efforts to curtail suburban sprawl and the construction of oversized ‘McMansions’ has intensified. Nevertheless, Sydney’s average house size remains among the largest of any major city in the world. The State Government’s Metropolitan Development Program, initiated by the implementation of the Sydney Region Outline Plan, monitors housing activity and provides information and forecasts on residential housing to the government.
Since 2005, greenfield development has been coordinated by the Growth Centres Commission, which has focused on two new urban sectors to the north-west and south-west of Sydney.
The Green Square urban rejuvenation project, including the transformation of Zetland from a working-class, industrial precinct to a higher-density and better-quality mixed-use precinct, has provided housing for some 30,000 Sydney residents. The Sydney City Council has taken the lead role in conjunction with the Department of Planning and Landcom (the State Government’s property developer) to achieve this objective.
Established in 2004, the former Redfern-Waterloo Authority also targeted residential revitalisation and employment around several strategic and significant sites in the Redfern area. As inner-city living and densities have increased throughout Surry Hills, Chippendale, Alexandria and Green Square, there has been a pressing need to deal with social upheaval in the Redfern and Waterloo area.
New leadership for a new millenium
In 2003, Frank Sartor left the City Council after 19 years of service, almost 12 of which were spent as Sydney’s Lord Mayor. During his tenure, Sartor was instrumental in transforming Sydney from a twentieth-century, commercial, nine-to-five downtown to a more vibrant, (almost) 24-hour ‘living city’. Sydney’s more multicultural, mixed-use flavour illustrated the diverse ethnicity and range of activities that have become part of contemporary Sydney. This new identity brought a renaissance of commercial buildings that displayed design excellence, as well as many public cultural and recreational buildings and public spaces reflecting Sydney’s status as a mature city.
Soon after relinquishing his position as Lord Mayor, Sartor was elected to State Parliament where, two years later, he became Minister for Planning in the Morris Iemma Labor Government. He implemented widespread reforms to the planning system, extending the boundaries of the Sydney City Council in an effort to fast-track consent for developments that were of “state significance.”
After Sartor’s departure from the City Council, Lucy Turnbull briefly assumed the role of Lord Mayor before Clover Moore was elected to the office in 2004. Moore has remained as Sydney’s Lord Mayor for an even longer term than Sartor. During this time, she has presided over another critical generation of development, reflecting a similar agenda to other cities throughout the world. Building on Sartor’s achievement of Sydney as a more livable urban precinct, Moore’s emphasis has been on sustainability, transportation and public domain improvement.
An increased focus on environmental responsibility
Sustainability has become a pressing international priority for governments, city administrators, urban planners, architects and world citizens. Since the 1980s, many European countries — Germany, Spain, Scandinavian nations and even Britain — have made significant advances in managing power consumption, waste recycling and transportation in their urban centres. Although Australia got off to a late start, the issue of environmental sustainability is now embedded, front and centre, in the consciousness of Sydney residents.
Recent energy crises in Australia have brought home the fact that the increasing population on this continent cannot continue to rely on coal-fired — or even clean coal — energy. Short-term economic benefits notwithstanding, coal mining is an industry that successive political parties have wrestled with. In a large continent with vast natural resources, mining of these naturally occurring minerals has continued unabated and enhanced national wealth at the expense of environmental considerations. Longer-term environmental opportunities lie in renewable technologies — solar, wind, gas and ocean current.
Since 2005, an emphasis on sustainability has been evident in Sydney, with five high-rise towers achieving the highest possible Green Star rating (six star), giving them ‘World Leadership’ status. These towers have reduced their carbon footprint to a quarter of a normal building of the same size. Attention to power consumption, water and waste recycling, the way buildings are heated and cooled, the selection of materials and their embodied energy and recyclability are all key aspects of environmentally responsible buildings that have led to new ways of thinking about urban development.
New ideas around transport
Along with Sydney’s new-found identity as a vibrant city comes the question of accessibility, transportation and walkability. While Sydney’s historic dependence on private motor cars persists, encouragement of public transport and bicycle use has led to the dedication of new bike lanes and restricted car lanes. The vision of Sydney as a city of villages is underpinned by the idea that walking, not driving, is a more sustainable, practical and dignified way to traverse the city. This concept is well established in European cities that have evolved over centuries as high-density pedestrian precincts generally with good public transport systems, but this has not been Sydney’s experience.
Clover Moore’s administration consulted Danish urbanist Jan Gehl on opportunities to pedestrianise more urban precincts within Sydney and to redress the priority that cars have through the arteries of the central business district. The introduction of light rail from Circular Quay to Kensington precipitated the closure of George Street from Hunter Street to the Town Hall. While the light rail was a State Government initiative, it was embraced by Sydney City Council as justification for further pedestrianisation of Sydney’s streets. These road closures enhance others, like Pitt Street Mall and Martin Place, but ultimate success depends upon the rapid connectivity of the city centre with the inner city and its ability to reduce traffic congestion through the streets of the city. Streets in Sydney have historically been arteries for private motor car circulation, not spaces for people, and while old habits die hard, Gehl has achieved notable success in similar experiments all over the world, including New York’s Times Square, San Francisco’s Market Street and Chongqing, in south-west China. Time will tell whether Gehl’s efforts in Sydney will, similarly, become game changers.
The ever-present future
Apart from the failure of successive state governments to realise and implement a long-term vision and strategy for growth, the largest short-term obstacle to Sydney’s progress is the difficulty of securing development consent because of excessive bureaucratic process and red tape. The situation in Sydney is incomparable to any other Australian city, where the rules are more clearly defined and respected and development approvals are more easily and rapidly provided. Once the vision, policies and rules are set, the approval process should be quick and decisive, irrespective of local “nimbyism” (Not In My Back Yard). While this sounds simple, it is a great challenge, requiring intelligence and expertise on the part of state and local government policy makers and planners.
Continue reading Sydney XXXL. Next: Chapter 4. The Present
