Sydney is tipped to have a population of 7.5 million by 2050.
Catherine Armitage looks into the future and discovers a bigger, better, hotter, wetter city.
Sydney 2050 will be hot, wet and happening, if all goes well.
We'll live closer to each other, we'll connect in digital spaces as much as in person, and we'll stick closer to home. Instead of battling the traffic we'll enjoy seamless journeys on multiple linked modes of transport.
We'll harbour-hop from village to village on vessels big and small. The most spectacular central business district in the Asia-Pacific region will be home to less of the city's big-business activity but more of its residents.
Sydney will be a more Asian-looking city, in the faces of its people and the bustling diversity of its streets where people live, shop and work.
The forces that have held sway over Sydney's development this past century – car ownership, the aspiration for a quarter-acre block, space-greedy manufacturing on the perimeter – are losing their grip.
New forces – smaller families, a low-carbon economy, digital connectivity, an ageing population, knowledge-based work, globalism – are shaping the city of the future.
Mid-century, Sydney could be the exchange powerhouse for ideas and business in south-east Asia, eclipsing rivals such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo, says the dean of the faculty of built environment at the University of NSW, Alec Tzannes.
Adding to the gifts of a "wonderful environment" and clement climate, "we will have established our world-class leadership in finance and education and core values, as reflected in our laws and our equitable society", he says.
"It makes us very distinctive in this region, a powerful player."
It will be "a place where global leaders want to be", Tzannes says.
The more so, says the head of the school of architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, Anthony Burke, because by 2050 Sydney will be home to selected global and national institutions. He asks why Sydney shouldn't be the political home of an Asia-Pacific forum, with "a purpose-built building, not unlike the UN in its charter, that creates a permanent place for conducting the business of the Asian-Pacific region, from business, trade and international law to governance and humanitarian issues".
Sydney could host the world environment court, with a precinct similar to that of The Hague for international law, as the symbolic home for world environmental treaties, rulings and science.
Another precinct would house the national centre for teacher education. "Like Finland, teaching is promoted to a high-level, top-earning professional career," Burke imagines. The Sydney centre would be a focus for training and research on teaching and learning best practice and house a selective public school for students identified as showing great promise as teachers.
If they're not lucky enough to live here, global leaders will at least be moving and shaking around the five-star facilities at the Badgerys Creek aerotropolis, the jewel of Sydney's west, imagines the foundation director of the Urban Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney, Phil O'Neill.
Air travel draws together "some of the most elite citizens on the planet, highly educated, highly paid, highly mobile people", he says, especially when flying reverts to a premium-priced luxury in the low-carbon economy. Management of air traffic will be a relatively minor preoccupation of future airports. The real action will be in the quality hotels, conference facilities, logistics centres, adjoining business park and perhaps even boutique stadium that will attract cross-national sporting events and all their spinoff businesses.
Like spokes around wheels, a combined bus network and metro system in the style of Paris and London will connect the CBD with five supporting city centres and transport hubs at Wollongong, Newcastle, Penrith, Parramatta and Liverpool, in turn connected to their surrounding suburbs. Sensors in roads will keep cars at safe distance from each other and moderate their speed, but more people will travel by bus or train than car, and more people will share cars than own them.
Around the city centres will be constellations of town centres and villages with cafes, bars, offices and meeting spaces. Banks, government departments and other companies might have, say, 20 regional offices, so "instead of everyone coming in to the CBD . . . individuals and employees can go and work out of them", a futurist, Ross Dawson, says.
Suburbs will be places to work instead of places just to get to work from, and those who don't work from home will be within 20 minutes by train, bus, cycle or walk from their office. For most people, the nine-to-five routine will seem alien and so will the cross-city commute. Work times will be "very individual" as we connect with colleagues in other time zones around the world.
"Whether we're at home or at the local working hub, we will be able to experience being in another environment, sitting around the table with other people and feeling we are there [with them]," Dawson says.
The city's population is forecast to reach 7.5 million by mid-century, 3.2 million more than now. Tzannes advocates holding it within present boundaries.
"There is no question that density and agglomeration are the basis of economic productivity," says the chief executive of the Committee for Sydney, Tim Williams. With higher-density living in the inner and many outer suburbs already, it's the "middle ring" – around areas such as Strathfield, Hurstville and Ryde – where "much of the new housing action of the next few decades" will occur, Williams predicts.
A mix of densities and housing types with a range of affordability will support diverse populations, so, for example, health and aged-care workers, teachers and tradespeople can live closer to those who buy their services.
The stock of housing will be "far more distinctive to accommodate many different ways of living", Tzannes says. Apartment buildings will be mixed-use, accommodating schools, services and other work environments as well as individual dwellings, perhaps topped by rooftop gardens.
The "values of separation and individuality are still there" but there is "much greater social behaviour to do with communal living", supported by larger areas of communal open space, he says. "We can all get a higher standard of living by not miniaturising life. Instead of a backyard you have a park. Instead of a [backyard] pool you have a community pool."
Of course, there's a different and more likely scenario for Sydney based on current trends: a sprawling, congested, polarised Los Angeles-style metropolis with ethnic enclaves, wealth and class divisions, clogged motorways, incoherent landscapes, no obvious focal points and expanses of cheap housing devoid of amenity or design integrity.
The "city of cities" concept has been NSW's official planning strategy for more than a decade, O'Neill says.
But the state government "doesn't seem to understand its own lesson of Barangaroo". For 23,000 jobs and a $5 billion investment, the inner-western foreshore development has involved years of planning and consultation as well as direct and detailed negotiations between the Premier and the state's richest man.
Each of the city centres envisaged for future Sydney would need 50,000 to 75,000 new jobs, the equivalent of three to five Barangaroos. "It shows the enormity of the task," O'Neill says. "Changing urban form requires a lot of money and a lot of effort and a very determined partnership by public and private sectors."
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