Macarthur: ‘A land of opportunity’
ENDLESS opportunities await the Macarthur area, NSW’s chief planner has promised, predicting a hub of positive activity to reinvigorate the region.
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ENDLESS opportunities await the Macarthur area, NSW’s chief planner has promised, predicting a hub of positive activity to reinvigorate the region.
NSW Planning Department chief planner Gary White, a 40-year planning veteran, told the Macarthur Chronicle last week the potential of the southwest growth corridor was “limitless”.
“The importance of the Macarthur corridor, in the context of Sydney, is significant,” Mr White said.
“It is probably going to be one of the most significant greenfield growth corridors anywhere in Australia during the next 10 to 20 years.
“We are at the front end of a new and emerging growth corridor for Sydney, which is well and truly a positive.”
Mr White, who helped lift southeast Queensland city Ipswich out of the doldrums before becoming the NSW chief planner, highlighted the extensive strategic master planning that went into ensuring the Macarthur region thrived.
“What we are trying to do is make change our friend,” he said. “We do this by ensuring change is done in a logical, strategic way.
“Sydney is already changing; what we are trying to do is let it change on the back of good strategic planning.”
The rapidly changing face of the Macarthur region, forecast to be home to an additional 250,000 residents over the next 20 years, has triggered concerns for existing residents.
By 2036, more than 600,000 people will call the Macarthur region home, including more than 100,000 in Wollondilly shire.
The biggest growth will occur in the Marylands precinct which will grow from 27 people to a predicted 19,003 by 2036 — a staggering 69,755.92 per cent rise.
Mr White said suggestions the region was being used as a dumping ground for Sydney was not the case.
“It is actually quite the opposite,” he said.
“I see this as an absolute opportunity to create this special place: to create a unique location and place where people from Sydney would want to go and live.
“When you start driving through some of the existing suburbs, they are as good as you would see anywhere.
“It is my understanding that people are already starting to discover the fantastic opportunities of being part of a new, growing community.”
Key infrastructure projects, such as recently announced North-South Rail Link, connecting Macarthur station to the Western Sydney Airport, have been strategically planned for logical delivery.
Mr White said population trigger points were in place to ensure infrastructure projects will be delivered, when required.
“One of the important things about this planning process is it sets the context for logical sequencing of the release of infrastructure,” he said.
“For instance, you might not put something in for day one but when you get the first 10,000 people that becomes a trigger point.
“The great thing we are doing is we are getting upfront and doing the masterplanning.”
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