Strategic directions for North Sydney city centre

The Committee for North Sydney recognised the urgent need to state clear strategic principles that should help investors, landowners, businesses, people who work in and visit North Sydney, residents and governments — and their planners — make choices about the future of the city centre.

It’s easy to come up with motherhood statements that might be wishful goals for all city centres — attractive, vibrant, sustainable — but much harder to translate these into specific choices and policies for actual places. Committee members worked on a ‘principles’ document to express aspirations for the North Sydney city centre that are based on its particular qualities (good and bad) and target concrete changes that might be feasible.

We were able to condense this into a single summary page that:

  • identifies the city’s potential strengths
  • lists its well-recognised weaknesses
  • proposes a set of principles to guide all development into the future (this is the section headed YET in the attached statement)
  • presents a vision of the city centre after transformative development over some decades
  • And ends with a ‘call to action‘ — it takes an engaged community AND a determined local government AND a responsible state government to achieve sustained positive change.

At its meeting on 9 July 2018, the Committee for North Sydney discussed the document in detail, refined it, and endorsed its publication to coincide with the launch of the Committee.

Here it is:

Strategic directions for North Sydney city centre