Sydney isn't dominated by inner-city knowledge workers
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By John Muscat We re-publish our article from 10 years ago which holds up as an explanation for why the metropolitan planning behind construction of the new 21 billion dollar Sydney M1 metro rail line is misconceived. Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald’s James Robertson fired another salvo in the paper’s long-running campaign for more inner-city infrastructure and amenity. Most of it was a regurgitation of some familiar assumptions about stalled employment growth on the industrial fringe and the need for rail ‘connectivity’ to core office-towers. Quoting an academic on the “schizophrenic nature” of Sydney’s housing construction, “either low-density [on the] fringe or high-density in the central city”, Robertson claims “sprawling population is becoming the biggest problem for government service delivery”, adding that “the trouble of travelling from western Sydney to the CBD has been the city’s most obvious transport issue for decades”. For a solution he cites more academics,