Urban development on Sydney’s rural-urban fringe
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 New Cities of Campbelltown, Camden, Appin Structure Plan.
These urban plans were grossly over-optimistic then and only appeared 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 in 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 on the Department Planning website for Sydney’s south west region.
Read about the 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 Aboriginal dreaming and then had its own dream removed by an east invasion in the form of Sydney’s urban growth.
The re-making of place in and around the fringe community of Camden and Campbelltown illustrates the destruction and reconstruction of cultural landscapes. Locals dream of retaining the aesthetics of inter-war country towns and 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 lived up to the hype. Unfulfilled expectations mean that Sydney’s rural-urban fringe is a transition zone where waves of invasion and succession have created perceptions of reality, and all that is left is imagination.
Learn more about urban development in the Macarthur region.
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
Updated 16 May 2023. Originally posted on 21 September 2015 as ‘Development of Sydney’s urban fringe’
Camden History Notes 
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