#sydneyplanning

Reading Elizabeth Farrelly's article in todays Sydney Morning Herald gives me some hope that there are people out there that believe that strengthening community and social welfare is more important to long term prosperity than the short term speculative dollar return on investment. I have watched our neighbourhood in Botany "develop" over the past 10 years. I support the idea of development and density, it is a given. What I do not support is the short term greed and total lack of interest shown by government in growing a shared prosperity through infrastructural improvement and investment in public spaces and transport.

There are 3 ways in and out of Botany, with the construction of hundreds of apartments any forward thinking government would see the need to be able to move all of these additional bodies in and out of our suburb, but no. The Port extension provided a great opportunity to improve and expand the rail corridor in and out of Botany, taking trucks off inner city roads and dare I say it, even provide a passenger rail link from Pagewood into Central Station. So far we have gained a set of new traffic lights and a roundabout to deal with the impending explosion of road traffic that is waiting to happen. What about a cycle path in and out of Botany? A safe path to ride to Mascot Station that does not involve playing chicken with trucks on Botany Road.

The Schools and medical services have not been adequately consulted in Botany so have had little time to prepare for the significant increase in population that is about to happen. Developers have not been sufficiently leveraged to improve the streets they are building on or the environments that they are impacting for fear of putting them off. Does it really matter if a developer is concerned about a small reduction in profit when we are talking about the long term health and well being of our community? Strong and intelligent planning and governance is what builds successful cities. This is evidenced all over the world, in Copenhagen, Vancouver, Paris, etc. etc. Why do we not have a government that is capable of governing in the interest of the majority of people that live and work in our cities? We know that a happy, healthy population will be more productive so why aren't we trying to create one?

The damage that is being done now will be our legacy for decades to come. We have amongst us some brilliant Urban thinkers, so why are these people constantly ignored in the name of economic growth. Clover Moore and the City of Sydney are the only light that I can see in these dark times, despite governments best attempts at undoing all of the good work they are achieving. It is not such a radical idea to let Planners, Architects and Economists lead the way in shaping our cities for us instead of handing over control to Casino's, speculative developers and the Roads and Maritime Service. Like Elizabeth Farrelly says, "Life is too short for bullshit".