Region. Metro Strategy is 'paralyised'

Western Sydney needs to host a net additional 280,000 jobs, by 2031, but paralysis exists in transferring the Metropolitan Strategy's targets into reality, said the director, of the UWS Urban Research Centre, Professor Phillip O'Neill, in an edited article in Fairfax Community Newspapers:

There is scant investment in our regional cities and sub-regional centres. Our regional cities – Parramatta, Penrith and Liverpool – are under equipped with decent transport and communications infrastructure.

Their links to surrounding suburbs are stifled by choked and inaccessible motorways. Their public spaces and amenities need urgent upgrade. Their sites for premium office investments need urgent planning and nurturing.

Then there is the problem of large scale business parks. Norwest and Sydney Olympic Park are pretty much full One prime site, the Western Sydney Employment Hub, in the Metropolitan Strategy, a 1500 hectare site at Erskine Park is targeted for 15 jobs per hectare, which is what you get when you fill up an industrial area with transport and logistics warehouses.

A real business park, like Norwest and Sydney Olympic Park, caters to much higher employment densities and contains a richer variety of jobs, especially those in higher skilled and higher paid industries and occupations.

The idea that all Western Sydney workers wear blue singlets to work and that blue-singlet jobs are what Western Sydney needs has never been true; and never will be.