Penrith. Blueprint for city

Penrith City Council, Penrith Partners and the French embassy commissioned the Paris art and architecture collective, Campement Urbain, to prepare a blueprint to rejuvenate the city. The problems facing Penrith - social disconnection, low-density sprawl, minimal public transport, monocultural spaces that are dead at night - are the same as communities on urban fringes everywhere, including Paris, said a Campement Urbain artist, Sylvie Blocher. “Penrith has so much in its pockets, its natural beauty with the river, the mountains, it could be the avant-garde of the suburbs,'' she said.

Kenps Creek. Radioactive waste

The state government has conceded that Kemps Creek was the only viable option if 5800 tonnes of mildly radioactive dirt and rock were to be removed from the site of a former uranium-processing plant. SITA Environmental Solutions, the company that operates the waste facility, said if material was radioactive it could not be safely stored there. "SITA has not been advised by the government of any decision relating to the waste at Hunters Hill and so we cannot comment further," the company said.