Battle of Waterloo: Inner city estate would be ‘ghetto disaster’
BATTLELINES have been drawn over a plan to redevelop Waterloo’s housing estate and increase the number of dwellings from 2000 to 7200.
NSW
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BATTLELINES have been drawn over a plan to redevelop Waterloo’s housing estate and increase the number of dwellings from 2000 to 7200.
The City of Sydney Council has dismissed a state government plan to redevelop the estate as “a planning disaster”. Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the plan for buildings of up to 40 storeys would create “future ghettos”.
But NSW Social Housing Minister Pru Goward said the plan for a mixture of private dwellings (70 per cent), affordable housing (5 per cent) and public housing (25-30 per cent) meant the precinct would be diverse.
RELATED: Crown Tower an Oasis in Waterloo
Ms Goward revealed the state government’s vision for sweeping redevelopment of the public housing precinct adjacent to Waterloo’s billion-dollar Metro quarter.
The precinct’s notorious towers, Matavai and Turanga, will remain standing for at least another decade.
Three options, known as Waterloo Estate, Waterloo Village Green and Waterloo Park, were presented to the local community via a brochure in early August.
Ms Moore criticised the plan as a threat to Sydney’s future over its high-density.
“The massive redevelopment ignores City planning controls and is being proposed despite the fact that it is already surrounded by other huge development sites — with no detail about how the area will cope,” she said.
The three options set out by the government include between 6500 and 7200 dwellings, with between three and 3.7ha of open public space and between 1.47ha and 1.93ha of residential open space.
The Waterloo Park plan represents the densest option with up to 7200 dwellings, more than tripling the current amount.
“The reality is that the pretty pictures in the government’s brochures will turn out to be the ghettos of the future,” Ms Moore said.
Community consultation will take several months.