Development of Sydney’s urban fringe

Sydney’s urban sprawl invades the Macarthur region again

Sydney’s urban growth is about to invade the Macarthur region yet again. This is a re-run of the planning disasters in Campbelltown of the late 1970s. These planning decisions were originally part of the 1968 Sydney Region Outline Plan and the 1973 Three Cities Plan for Campbelltown, Camden, Appin. These plans were grossly over-optimistic at the time and only made an appearance in the Camden LGA in the 1980s at Mount Annan and Currans Hill. Tracts of land were sold off for housing in 1973 including part of Camden Park Estate, while historic buildings in Camden were demolished – Royal Hotel.

The areas that are part of the current proposal are: Appin & West Appin, Wilton Junction, South Campbelltown, Menangle Park, Mount Gilead and Menangle areas.

Read more @ Massive boost to housing supply for Greater Sydney with biggest release of land in 10 years (ABC News)

and more  @  Greater Macarthur Land Release Investigation (NSW Department of Planning and Environment)

Inspect the map for the proposed land releases @ Map

Read about land release at Menangle Park here  (Urban Growth NSW)

Sydney’s metropolitan fringe is a theatre for the creation and loss of collective memories, cultural myths and community grieving around cultural icons, traditions and rituals. European settlement took the dreaming of the Aborigines and then had its own dreaming removed by an invasion from the east in the form of Sydney’s urban growth. The re-making of place in and around the fringe community of Camden illustrates the destruction and re-construction of cultural landscapes. Locals dream of retaining the aesthetics of an inter-war country town and in doing so have created an illusion of a historical myth of a ‘country town idyll’. In the new suburbs of Oran Park, Mt Annan and Harrington Park urbanites have invaded the area drawn by developer spin, which promised to fulfil hopes and dreams and never really lives up to the hype. Unfulfilled expectations mean that Sydney’s rural-urban fringe is a zone of transition where waves of invasion and succession have created perceptions of reality and all that is left is imaginings.

Read more at the Sydney Journal

Read more about the suburbs on Sydney’s rural-urban fringe at the Dictionary of Sydney

Read more about the country town idyll at Camden NSW