It was a long street lined with block after block of red-brick walk-ups - those ubiquitous two to five storey buildings that spread through
Sydney's western suburbs during the 1960s. Cabramatta that day was
blisteringly hot and there were no trees to cool the tarmac. Just a week
before I had stood on another long street, this one in Hurstville, a major
suburban centre on the city's southside. That street was lined with the
1970s version of those walk-ups but the feeling here was completely
different thanks to an avenue of tall shady trees, which cooled the air
and provided a sense of softness to the streetscape.
Two streets, two different parts of Sydney. Each similar in housing
type but different in ambience ... like the policies of the two major
parties on urban development, I thought a few days later, when state
Liberal leader and would-be Premier John Brogden condemned the NSW urban
consolidation policy.
Urban development in Sydney is a timely issue because the city's growth
potential is limited by national parks to the north and south and the
escarpment of the Blue Mountains to the west. With sprawling urban
development now abutting the foothills of the Blue Mountains, the
agricultural south-western and north-western corridors are the only
remaining growth sectors, the open country that developers would change
into grids of single-household dwellings. As land becomes scarcer, the
intrusion of urban development onto agricultural land and the form of
medium-density development in the suburbs have become political issues.
The real answers to these issues, however, may have less to do with
electoral politics than with urban design and the zoning of land according
to suitability for use.
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Urban Consolidation is a vote winner
What Brogden has been railing against is the fear that the Sydney of
the future could look more like that street in Cabramatta than the city of
detached houses, each with their spacious garden, that characterised the
metropolis from the 1930s. He thinks people still retain the
"Australian dream" of a house and garden in the suburbs and that
the government's urban consolidation policy, a policy that has
underwritten Sydney's boom in apartment building construction, is ruining
the character of the suburbs.
There are votes in Brogden's thinking and he knows it – that's why he
has already started to campaign on the issue. He doesn't have to try very
hard because urban development has been an irritant to Premier Bob Carr
since the last local government elections. Then, independents found
success in campaigning against urban consolidation on the same grounds
that Brogden will put to use over the coming year.
What the Opposition Leader is pinning his hopes on is the growing
groundswell against medium-density development. This focuses on issues
such as poor apartment building design, lack of public open space,
overshadowing, overcrowding, stressed infrastructure and excessive
traffic. These are all valid complaints that can only be solved by
introducing legislation providing for the setting-aside of public open
space in major developments, the design of high-rise so that it does not
overshadow public places and ensuring that sufficient infrastructure
exists before the go-ahead to build is granted by local government. As for
the design of apartment buildings, Carr believes he has already addressed
that by stipulating that all buildings over a certain height must be
designed by an architect. The Premier has even gone so far as to name in
public the buildings he approves of.
John Brogden's notion of a "loss of suburban character" due
to urban consolidation is a slippery one. It is a difficult notion to pin
down and necessarily varies from place to place. What he is talking about,
of course, is the intrusion of apartment living into the streets
consisting more or less exclusively of detached homes. Brogden's notion
harks back to past decades when communities and the suburbs they inhabited
were more secure and changed less rapidly, yet in using the notion as a
vote catcher Brogden has to tread warily because the evidence is that the
apartment is attractive to more and more people.
Some critics say that the notion has much to do with middle-class urban
respectability but, irrespective of whether that is true, the perceived
loss of suburban character has plenty of electoral potential on Sydney's
predominately Liberal northern shore and in marginal seats such as
Hurstville. 'Loss of character' is set to become a well-worn phrase by the
time the election is over.
There remains another issue cited by Premier Carr as evidence of the
need for urban consolidation. This is potentially more controversial and
it has been something of a fixation with Carr for some years. It is
immigration.
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A city of too many
It may be an economic strength but it is a planning dilemma that
migrants account for 75 per cent of Sydney's annual population growth.
According to Carr and state planning Minister Andrew Refshauge,
immigration is increasing the demand for housing, driving up prices and
straining infrastructure.
Immigrants are attracted to Sydney because it is economically dynamic
and because they can find people from the same country or ethnicity here.
Once in the city, immigrants frequently settle in enclaves where they can
find a language they know, churches, temples or mosques, cultural
associations, community workers to help them and the food they are
familiar with.
Understandable as it might be to settle in ethnic or national enclaves,
critics say that it leads to a defensive and isolationist mentality with
little interaction with the Anglo majority. This breeds suspicion, not
sympathy, with people identifying themselves according to ethnicity or
religion rather than as citizens of the city.
In his latest statement on the issue, in November 2002 Carr called for
a one-third reduction in the national migrant intake, bringing the figure
down to 80 000, to relieve pressure on the Sydney metropolitan area.
Sydney's population strain, he claims, is a federal responsibility and
there is little the state government can do about it – a convenient
attitude in the lead up to a state election.
Better to address reality, not assumptions
The state Opposition Leader believes that the "Australian
dream" of owning a house and garden in the suburbs is still alive.
This appears to be an assumption on Brogden's part and it is, at best,
only partially true. The fact is that the single-household, detached
dwelling may even be a housing preference in decline. The evidence for
this is the people voting with their bank loans in choosing the same
medium-density living that Brogden finds so electorally distasteful. That
is why Sydney is passing through a boom in apartment living, why so many
young couples, singles, middle aged and older citizens are foregoing the
house and garden, with all its maintenance, for the ease of an apartment
within reasonable distance of the city, the beach, the railway station or
the workplace. This is a trend that will gain momentum as the 'baby
boomer' generation ages. Among the younger demographic it is a trend
driven by Australia's shrinking household size and the growing number of
households without children or in which children have been postponed.
Irrespective of the validity of the Australian dream of house and
garden, there are alternative 'real' issues of greater importance to home
buyers that Brogden might more profitably address. Growing numbers of
first-home buyers, for instance, are being priced out of the metropolitan
housing market by runaway house and land values. They cannot afford to buy
a house in the established suburbs or even in new, urban fringe estates
where affordable housing has traditionally been found. So where are they
going in search of affordable housing? To the satellite cities within
commuting distance of Sydney. Centres such as Gosford and the Illawarra,
where they push up local housing prices and face long work-day commutes to
the city.
Opposition far from total
Opposition to medium-density is widespread but far from complete. Some
local governments, such as South Sydney, see an influx of thousands of new
residents countering trends associated with their existing lower-income
demographic occupying old and sometimes decaying industrial suburbs and a
declining rating base.
In parts of Sydney, old industrial sites are being moulded into
medium-density apartment developments; many complete with ground-level
shops and open space. What was in the 1960s the British Automotive
Industries car assembly plant and later a Navy stores, for instance, is
now the Green Square development. Not far away the old ACI glass factory
and Resch's brewery has become a major socially successful apartment
development. The area adjacent to the new Wolli Creek railway station and
open land to the immediate south of Sydney airport is soon to undergo
mixed commercial/ residential development and will be home to thousands of
new residents.
Such large-scale developments bring a new dynamic to old working-class
and industrial areas, creating demand for the facilities the residents
prefer: cafes, coffee shops, entertainment venues, delicatessens,
specialty shops – and in so doing bring change to down-at-heel areas and
a larger rating base to councils.
Where are the solutions?
Reducing the pressure on urban-fringe land and reducing the rate of
urban sprawl are the rationales of Labour's urban consolidation policy.
The government rightly argues that housing more people in medium-density
developments around major public-transport nodes such as railway stations
reduces the impetus to develop farmland into sprawling, poorly serviced
single-dwelling estates. There is a common sense to this because if
farmland continues to be lost to development then Sydney will be forced to
import its fresh food from further afield and prices will rise.
While enlightened architectural and urban design, combined with
legislation mandating a more holistic approach to development by local
government, might take into account the availability of infrastructure,
traffic flows and the creation of public open space to improve
medium-density development in the suburbs, a different approach is
necessary when dealing with land on the urban fringe if sprawl is to be
reduced and valuable agricultural land conserved.
Here, in the very areas losing agricultural and bush land to
single-family dwelling estates, a better approach might be for the state
government to carry out land-quality surveys to identify areas suitable
for agriculture and those of marginal agricultural quality. Landuse zoning
would then set aside marginal land for urban development when
infrastructure such as energy, water, transport and sewage became
available. Land of prime agricultural value would be zoned as such and
urban development disallowed.
The long-term pattern would be one of village-like settlements with
medium-density and other housing options providing a large enough
population to support small businesses providing services to the
settlement. Surrounded by agricultural and bush land, such urban centres
might go some way to provide the village-like environment and sense of
community that many Australians say they would prefer while conserving
agricultural land for its best use.