‘Flawed vision’: Master plan for Sydney’s homes, jobs and transport slammed

The master plan underpinning Sydney’s growth for the coming decades undermines Parramatta’s potential, fails to combat the intense heat of outer western Sydney and places too much emphasis on motorways, two planning experts say.

The academics also sow doubt about the utility of the Western Sydney Airport, warning air traffic trends are working against it and the economic activity associated with the aerotropolis is probably “exaggerated”.

The “western parklands city” envisaged by the Greater Cities Commission is centred around the second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek.Credit: Brook Mitchell

In a newly published paper, Sydney University associate professor Glen Searle and Melbourne University professor emeritus Kevin O’Connor criticised the “flawed vision” of the then Greater Sydney Commission’s 2018 master plan A Metropolis of Three Cities, which divided Sydney into an “eastern harbour city”, a “central river city” around Parramatta and a “western parklands city” around Penrith, Campbelltown, Liverpool and the airport.

They said the emphasis on the western parklands city being “as self-contained as possible” meant giving a lower priority to jobs and services in other areas, while greater urgency should have been given to Metro West, which will link Parramatta to the eastern CBD but not until 2030.

“Perhaps [the plan’s] biggest weakness is the large motorway program that is built into the strategy, especially in inner/middle suburbs,” they wrote in a paper in the Urban Policy and Research journal. “The potential for building Parramatta into a genuine second metropolitan CBD by prioritising new rail connections has not been adequately realised.”

While Searle and O’Connor praised Three Cities for trying to rebalance jobs and amenity across the sprawling Sydney basin, they argued the investment may be “spread too thinly” across the western parklands to generate sufficient volume and variety of jobs and services.

New housing estates in Sydney’s outer west, such as Oran Park, suffer from the urban heat island effect.Credit: Getty Images

They said the commission was “too reticent” in imposing planning policies that would reduce the extreme heat of outer western Sydney, where temperatures frequently exceed 35 degrees. Much of the intended development around South Creek was more than a kilometre from the water – “too far for many to walk on hot days” – while the plan did not adequately challenge the outer-suburban development model of “large houses covering nearly all of their allotments with virtually non-existent, treeless backyards”.

The professors also said the commission seemed to ignore the development potential of cooler areas such as Dural and Galston in the north, or the Central Coast.

While the planned western parklands city is underpinned by the aerotropolis, Searle and O’Connor said global airlines were increasingly focused on regional “hubs” serving many destinations, such as Seoul or Amsterdam. “Sydney is really at the end of spokes from other hubs, rather than being a hub in its own right.”

They also warned Sydney’s share of Australia’s international air traffic had fallen 10 per cent since the year 2000 as other cities stepped up, while Sydney Airport would remain a strong competitor.

“Taking these factors into account ... the scale and complexity [of economic activity around the airport] are likely to fall well short of what has been envisaged as part of the strategy,” they said.

In a statement, the commission said Three Cities had “contributed to more housing, jobs, infrastructure and services being within a 30-minute reach of more people across Greater Sydney”.

It noted it was renamed the Greater Cities Commission earlier this year and now has an expanded remit including Newcastle and the Lower Hunter, the Central Coast and Illawarra-Shoalhaven, as well as the three Sydney cities. It will develop a new region plan for the six cities by the end of next year, addressing key issues such as job creation, transport, housing and urban heat.

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