A new metropolitan strategy is being developed for Sydney. It will provide a framework for Sydney’s growth to help plan for housing, employment, transport, infrastructure, the environment and open space.
The strategy will update the current Metropolitan Plan for Sydney and link it to the government’s other long-term plans – the Long Term Transport master Plan and the State Infrastructure Strategy.
In a city of Sydney’s size, we need to plan for enough housing and jobs of the right type in the right place, properly serviced by infrastructure and transport networks – these issues cannot be left to chance. We need an overarching vision to plan for short, medium and long term improvements and manage growth, change and opportunities in the future.
The new Metropolitan Strategy will set an agreed government and community vision for Sydney in the next 20 years. It will also identify the other partners and actions needed to make that vision a reality.
Throughout the year, the department will consult with communities, residents, businesses, workers, government and industry about what they want for Sydney to set an agreed course for the future.
As a baby boomer born in 1945; I observe and comment that our local government appears to have changed little since the fifties if they are planning only now for the next 20 years, as opposed to looking at planning commencing in 10 years say, and projecting at least another 2 to 3 generations forward from that starting point.
It should have been obvious with the influx of Europeans after the second world war; that by 1957 the high schools would have been overcrowded. However nothing was planned in advance and in 1957 when I commenced high school, I was notified the day before school commenced that too many high school entrants were to start the next week and the government, needed more schools with higher levels of education to accommodate all of us.
I lived in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and had sat an examination to qualify for Sydney High selective class; I passed. With all my uniforms purchased and ready to roll, I received a letter at the 12th hour stating that I couldn’t attend Sydney High. Dover Heights Girls Science School, overnight, was converted into a high school. For the first time in its history four classes were created to accommodate students who wished to study Mathematics at matriculation standard along with languages. Guess where I went to high school?
If that wasn’t enough of a stir, a similar event occurred 5 years later when we all matriculated and for the first time a quota system was put into place in all the universities, and also for teaching scholarships
Had plans been made much further ahead, it might have been possible to foresee many obstacles in the education system alone.
Success follows failure and it takes wisdom to learn from past mistakes rather than create a whole lot of new ones.