Sydney Into Its Third Century
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sydney into Its Third Century: Metropolitan Strategy for the Sydney Region was a metropolitan planning scheme for Sydney, released in 1988 by Minister for Planning – and future Premier – Bob Carr. The strategy replaced the 1968 Sydney Region Outline Plan (SROP). The new strategy marked a significant break with the past: eliminating major transport infrastructure projects including prospects for rapid transit, emphasising urban densification, and opening up new areas to development far from established mass transport networks.[1][2]
The Australian Labor Party returned to power with a one-seat Legislative Assembly majority in 1976 after more than a decade in Opposition. The new premier, Neville Wran had promised on the campaign trail to halt inner-city expressway projects. Reservations dating from the 1948 County of Cumberland planning scheme were eliminated and acquired properties sold off, making future completion of the long-planned North Western Expressway and Western Freeway prohibitively expensive.[3] Wran also severely truncated the Eastern Suburbs railway, then under construction.
Displeased with his predecessors' SROP, Wran had it amended in 1980. In 1987, Wran's roads minister, Laurie Brereton, released Roads 2000, described by the government as "a new deal for road users". The plan was the formal replacement of the radial-expressway model of the 1948 and 1968 plans: at its centrepiece was a massive ring road highway. Much of this new road would be built as motorway, but some of which would remain standard arterial road.
Roads 2000 made a virtue of its lack of ambition, citing the environmental benefits of abolishing road reservations, such as the Lane Cove Valley Expressway alignment.[4]
The new plan
In 1988 – the city's 200th anniversary – Carr, Wran's planning minister, released a new strategy, called Sydney into Its Third Century. Though it emphasised continuity with the 1948 Cumberland Plan and the 1968 SROP, the 1988 plan represented a major change in strategy. Although Sydney's borders would continue to expand, principally to the west and south-west, the government would explicitly target higher urban density.
Whereas the Cumberland Plan had failed to anticipate high growth, the SROP underestimated urban density: the falling number of people per household. (The footprint earmarked for five million people by 2000 ended up accommodating only four million.)[5] Carr's plan championed a new approach to urban design, characterised by infill development, smaller lots, smaller street frontages, narrower roads and a 20 per cent multi-unit dwelling target.[1] In doing so it represented an early salvo in a debate between local councils and state agencies about development densities that continues to this day.[2]