The metro will start to break down those barriers. For now,it’s just one long line. But next year that line will extend to Bankstown,and in years to come there will be a second one linking Olympic Park with Parramatta and Sydney CBD – in minutes. Sydney Metro architect Rodd Staples hasurged the government to “keep digging” and lock future metro lines into the infrastructure pipeline.
Architect and urban designer Philip Vivian argues we haven’t really started thinking and talking about the metro’s true potential,nor put in place mechanisms to capture the value it will create through higher density and closer economic links.
Architect and urban planner Philip Vivian said policymakers had not really started thinking and talking about the metro’s full potential.Credit:Dion Georgopoulos
“The NSW government,on behalf of us,has paid for the infrastructure,but it has led to windfall gains for property owners,” he says. “The extra density around these metro stations should be sold by the state government to developers to help pay for the metro line.”
This is,of course,what they do overseas. But Australia has never embraced systematic value capture,preferring sporadic,after-the-fact rezoning. Minns’ big housing drive has led the government to take control of planning at selected metro stations;Vivian says the state should have seized control at all of them,and from the start.
“We’ve delivered the transport,but I think the city-making vision is still being solidified,” he says. “The state government is saying,‘We’ll increase the height and density of housing around metro stations to help with the housing crisis.’ But they’re saying that on the eve of opening,and we’re over 10 years into this project.”
Vivian – whose firm Bates Smart designed over-station buildings at Pitt Street South and Victoria Cross – says the obvious comparison is Paris’ Grand Express,a $58 billion mega-project of metro lines linking the suburbs with central Paris. It is vision-led,he says,with an explicit purpose of connecting areas not well-served by public transport,reducing social inequality and developing areas around stations.
Transport Minister Jo Haylen and Member for Coogee Marjorie O’Neill,left,get a banh mi at North Sydney.Credit:Edwina Pickles
That’s not to say this element has been entirely missing in Sydney’s version. As theHeraldreported at the weekend,one of the big choices in this project was whether to route through Waterloo or the University of Sydney. A former Coalition transport minister said the government went with Waterloo “to gentrify the area and uplift the social housing”.
But the most significant change might be Sydney’s relationship with the car. Despite leading the country in public transport use,we are still a car-dependent city in the 1950s American tradition – more LA than London. If people can walk or cycle to the metro,without needing a car,the city will take a big stride toward decarbonisation. “In doing that,we can re-humanise the city,” Vivian says.
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And with less traffic on the road,better transport and more green spaces in these new station precincts,people may become more relaxed about the growth and density they are being asked to accommodate for the future. At present,it is gold-plated infrastructure for,all told,not that many people.
None of this will happen overnight,but Vivian says the Parisian experience shows us you can transform a city “in an incredibly short period of time”. London demonstrates “we could increase our density without losing our amenity of our residential areas and our lifestyle”.
Such opportunities aren’t simply afterthoughts;they should be baked into the raison d’être for Sydney’s next metro ventures.
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