Bradfield Oration: Lucy Turnbull outlines shift of state power as ‘three-city’ concept takes shape
SYDNEY would be transformed into a three-city metropolis, and NSW parliament could move to Parramatta, under the Greater Sydney Commission’s bold vision for our future.
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- Officially a great night for Sydney
- Bradfield Oration: A bold new vision for Sydney’s towering future
- READ LUCY TURNBULL’S FULL SPEECH
THE NSW parliament could be moved to Parramatta by the middle of the next decade as part of a bold Greater Sydney Commission vision to create a three-city metropolis.
Delivering The Daily Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration last night, Greater Sydney Commission chief commissioner Lucy Turnbull said the move would be appropriate by 2025, because the areas west of Parramatta would increasingly be Sydney’s population, commercial and government centres.
“What could be more logical than having our government right in the heart of the city where most of the population is based?” Ms Turnbull told an audience of the city’s business and political elite.
“A new parliament in the Central City of Parramatta in the mid-2020s could be a game-changer for Sydney.”
As the woman in charge of planning Sydney’s future, Ms Turnbull said Sydney would increasingly become “a tale of three cities”.
The traditional Sydney CBD and surrounds would be known as the Eastern City.
The Greater Parramatta and Olympic Park area would become the Central City.
And the area around the new Badgerys Creek airport would be the Western City — first unveiled this week as part of The Daily Telegraph’s Project Sydney series.
Earlier yesterday Ms Turnbull said moving the whole of state government to Parramatta was not out of the question.
“The airport will be the anchor of new jobs across many sectors and underpin and drive the growth.”
She pointed to a host of government departments, related bodies and companies that were already moving to Parramatta as a result of new, attractive office development in the city.
“The NSW Planning Department is moving to Parramatta in two years,” she said.
“The Education Department, NSW Police and the Greater Sydney Commission are out there (and) more departments are coming to Parramatta. Who knows? In five to seven years the idea of moving all of state government, including parliament, from the Eastern City to the Central City might be irrefutably logical.”
Ms Turnbull said planners were finally treating Parramatta as Sydney’s Central City, with total investment from the public and private sector of “over $10 billion over the next five years”, and two busloads of people moving to Parramatta every week over five years.
She has also pointed to the new “aerotropolis” — tentatively called the Greater West City — to be built around the new airport at Badgerys Creek as a massive driver of growth for Western Sydney.
The Daily Telegraph revealed this week the new airport would feature two residential “cities”, a north city and a south city on either side of the airport, along with the Elizabeth Park Industrial Zone that will become the business heart of the aerotropolis.
In her oration, Ms Turnbull said Sydney’s third city, the new western city to be created around the airport, was “a critical focus for Greater Sydney and, arguably, a primary reason for the Greater Sydney Commission’s creation”.
She has also referenced a group of existing Western Sydney cities dubbed the “string of pearls” — Campbelltown, Liverpool, Blacktown and Penrith — that would be boosted by the new airport.
“The airport will be the anchor of new jobs across many sectors and underpin and drive the growth and success of the string of pearls,” she said.
Talks are believed to be well underway about joint federal and state funding for the new aerotropolis.
Ms Turnbull said in the past there had been calls for the airport to be called “Bradfield”, after John Bradfield, the man responsible for building the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
“But perhaps in fact it should be the Western Sydney City that we call Bradfield — centred around the airport, or ‘aerotropolis’,” she said.
“We need a balanced city and distribution of assets.”
The GSC chief pointed out that the new airport city would continue Sydney’s tradition of building its major centres around waterways.
“If the Eastern City is the Harbour City and the Central City is the Great River City, perhaps the Western City can be the South Creek City. It will use as a key lifestyle asset South Creek, which runs 80km north through the heart of Western Sydney,” she said.
Ms Turnbull said the three-cities model could make Sydney “the capital of the southern hemisphere — if we get the planning right”.
“For our city to grow, become more productive and more liveable, we need a balanced city and distribution of assets at the centre and west of our city if it is going to work well and provide a great quality of life for all,” she said.
The power audience at the event included Premier Mike Baird, business titan Frank Lowy, LendLease Group chief executive Steve McCann, News Corp executive chairman Michael Miller, Herald and Weekly Times chairwoman Penny Fowler and three of John Bradfield’s grandchildren.
Also among the guests are Greater Western Sydney chairman Tony Shepherd, University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Dr Michael Spence, WestConnex chief Dennis Cliche and a battery of government ministers including Planning Minister Rob Stokes, Transport Minister, Andrew Constance and Trade and Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres.
The NSW Opposition was represented by leader Luke Foley and deputy Michael Daley.
WORTHY WINNER SETS HER SIGHTS SKY HIGH
A RADICAL plan for Sydneysiders to travel around our city on drones is a vision as dramatic as John Bradfield’s was for the Harbour Bridge or city’s underground rail system just over a century ago.
University of Sydney student Kate Zambelli, 19, was last night awarded the 2016 Lendlease Bradfield Urbanisation Scholarship, now in its second year, for her bold plan to create a system where drones will become a major part of the city’s transport mix.
She was presented with the prize by Lendlease CEO Steve McCann and University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence at the Bradfield Oration dinner last night.
Under Kate’s plan, people would order driverless drones via their phones and fly to Transport Orientated Developments (TODs) scattered around the city.
University of Sydney urban planning lecturer Adrienne Keane said the judges loved Ms Zambelli’s idea and the way she approached the challenge.
“Kate’s TOD concept was really appealing, and the vision of autonomous hover drones was particularly exciting,” Dr Keane said.
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