CEO Message 23.10.20

23 Oct 2020

NSW Government’s ‘Harbour Bridge moment’

This week we ramped up our advocacy for the Western Parkland City. The Western Sydney Airport Metro Line is a crucial piece of city shaping infrastructure which provides the ‘iron spine’ for the Western Parkland City and should serve to connect the ‘West with the West’ as a north south city. The release of the EIS this week cinched the current scope of the government’s vision for the West.

This significant government investment must fully capitalise on the potential access, connectivity, job creation, housing delivery, amenity and placemaking opportunities for residents and businesses in Western Sydney. We applaud government for committing to infrastructure investment for the West, but we need to make sure we are building the right city.

This plan for the Airport line fails to take the long term city shaping opportunities’ into account, and we fear that we will end up developing the wrong city and Western Sydney will remain an ostensibly car-orientated, low density and jobs-poor urban landscape.

UDIA NSW has been advocating for delivery of an 18-station metro line, with an additional three stations in Stage One. The full provision of stations will deliver far greater housing diversity for the Western Parkland City, with potential for 93,000 jobs and 78,000 dwellings to be enabled by 2056 in these TOD centres, with significant housing affordability benefits, including the opportunity to turbo charge the nascent Build-to-Rent sector with projects developed on government-owned land surrounding station boxes.

The Urban AI project clearly demonstrates the case for re-examination of more stations for Stage 1 (St Marys to Aero Core) than currently slated. By including three additional stations not only does accessibility to local and metro-wide jobs increase exponentially for tens of thousands of people it will deliver circa 9,000 more dwellings and 12,000 more jobs.

This is the Harbour Bridge moment for Western Sydney and now is the time to get it right for the West, if we are to develop a globally competitive future for Sydney.

J oin us on UDIA TY next Thursday 29 October for our Signature Series briefing with Minister Ayers to discuss Urban AI and the South West Urban Development Program.