Developers want a new road heading to Appin to help in building 40,000 new homes

Developers have pinpointed one outer Sydney suburb as key to helping to unlocking the city’s housing shortage, and are hoping for a major infrastructure project there.

The future answers to Sydney’s housing woes could be in the southwest, with developers poised to build 40,000 new homes pushing for a major new arterial road to help a home-building boom in the Macarthur Region.

Major landowners including Walker and Inghams hope a new arterial road linking the Hume Highway to Appin will allow them to super-charge plans for thousands of new homes in the area, which currently mainly consist of sprawling farmland.

The largest Appin landowner, Walker Corporation, has plans to build 15,000 homes as it works to get final planning approval for their precinct proposal.

Walker executive chairman Lang Walker said the abundance of nature reserves in the area was a major drawcard to building in the Macarthur region, which had been deemed a major growth area by the NSW Government.

Planning Minister Rob Stokes earlier this year banned the use of dark roofs on the city’s southwest new-builds, in a bid to address urban heat from new developments built closer to the foot of the Blue Mountains.

Mr Walker outlined a vision of a new development making the most of the natural landscape around it.

“We have presented our vision of environmentally sustainable, community villages connected to walking trails, waterfalls, waterholes and gorges,” the developer heavyweight told The Telegraph.

“Appin is focused on healthy, heat-smart communities with tree-lined streets and back yards designed to reduce urban heat.”

Poised just 20 minutes from the Illawarra coastline, the influx of new homes would be the latest in the exploding development potential of Sydney’s west, headlined by the construction of the Nancy-Bird Walton international airport.