Queen Lucy’s plan for Western Sydney is a slave labour special economic zone

More “three city” Sydney rubbish today. This time from The Guardian:

Poet Kenneth Slessor called it a “dispersed and vaguer Venice”; journalist John Birmingham, a “Leviathan”. From its earliest days, Sydney has wrestled with its history as an “unplanned” but naturally blessed city, where unchecked development competes with liveability and beauty.

…The city is on a path to nearly double its population of 4.7 million by 2056; by contrast London and New York are expected to grow by 30% over the same period. That growth has been uneven. Of the 1.7 million more people expected in the city by 2036, two-thirds are expected to settle in the 6,300 sprawling square kilometres of more multicultural, less prosperous Greater Western Sydney. Meanwhile jobs and wealth (two thirds of the state’s economic growth in 2015-16) continue to be concentrated largely in the east, in a narrow “Eastern Economic Corridor,” stretching from Macquarie Park north of the Harbour Bridge to the international airport in the south.

…This inequality between centre and periphery is not peculiar to Sydney. It is also part of a global trend, in which populations are deserting leafier areas for the attractions of a denser inner city.

…That is the context into which the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC) has just released its strategic regional plan, a vision for how the city can smooth those lines out over the next 40 years of growth and deliver the benefits more equally. It presents the region’s rapid expansion as an opportunity for “transformative urban renewal” that, if proactively harnessed, starting now, could ensure the Sydney of the not-too-distant future remains a global city which is both culturally diverse and an economic powerhouse.

The language is positive, but what it proposes is radical. It will divide Sydney from one city, into three.

Under the ambitious plan for “A Metropolis of Three Cities”, Sydney is to be reshaped into three separate but linked urban centres: an Eastern Harbour City focused on the existing central business district (CBD), a Central River City at its geographical centre to the west and, further west still, the Western Parkland City.

…However, while the three-city metropolis may look like an about-turn in Sydney’s traditional orientation, it has roots that predate colonisation, according to the GSC’s chief commissioner. In her introduction, Lucy Turnbull writes that the city’s redrawn boundaries reflect Indigenous people’s relationships to the land as “saltwater country” (Eastern Harbour City), “muddy river country” (Central River City), and “running water country” (Western Parkland City).

…It remains to be seen how much the Sydney of 40 years’ time resembles the one set out by the GSC. But by proposing a plan that does not focus on its postcard harbour and CBD, and investing in areas it has previously left casually to spread, A Metropolis of Three Cities may see the old imaginative boundaries of Sydney disappear forever.

Lovely prose, artistic references, genteel interviews. Great Guardian journalism. Except it’s all bullshit.

The “three city” Sydney idea will make all existing problems associated with crush-loading far worse. Adding that many new people will obviously keep dwelling prices much higher than otherwise. Nor is there any way to retrofit Sydney’s infrastructure to accommodate the bigger population, just ask Infrastructure Australia (why didn’t The Guardian?). Under every crush-loaded Sydney scenario transport, green space and access to essential services for existing residents all get much worse:

And the one thing you can be quite certain of is that our inept and corrupt planners will deliver the worst case outcome.

Ground zero will be the western suburbs of course. In fact, it will only be worse there. It gets all of the people:

Jammed into apartments. Back in December, the Urban Taskforce projected that Sydney will transform into a high-rise ‘battery chook’ city mid-century, whereby only one quarter of all homes will be detached houses:

And working on slave wages, previously via Domainfax:

A concentration of underpaid workers has been uncovered in western Sydney, with almost two- thirds of businesses audited found to be seriously short-changing workers or failing to keep proper pay records.

The Fair Work Ombudsman investigation found that 64 per cent of almost 200 businesses audited were breaching workplace laws in suburbs including Cabramatta, Guildford, Mount Druitt, Fairfield and Merrylands.

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James said businesses that were underpaying workers and not issuing them with correct pay records were on notice that future breaches could result in serious enforcement action.

…The suburbs are also home to a higher than average proportion of migrants, with both Harris Park (85 per cent) and Parramatta (74 per cent) at more than twice the national average of 30.2 per cent.

…“When combined with a lack of familiarity with workplace laws, language barriers can present significant difficulties to employers seeking to understand and comply with their obligations.”

…She said new arrivals to Australia might have a limited awareness of Australian workplace laws.

What Queen Lucy Turnbull is effectively proposing is to turn Western Sydney into special economic zone of cheap wages, corrupt developers and realtors, infrastructure rentiers and collapsing living standards that the eastern robber barons can exploit to their heart’s content.

It’s not some elegant plan fallen from blessed lips of noblesse oblige. It is a toxic, city-scale class war designed to enrich Queen Lucy’s court at the expense of the west.