This is the backdrop to the differential life expectancy outcomes in Sydney. While the new Western Sydney Airport will help to provide new opportunities for high-paid knowledge jobs in the region, and while the excellent Western Sydney University is proving to be a brilliant nurturer of talent for the future, we can and must do better to fill the jobs gap. These are thus neither job-rich nor healthy environments and are likely to sustain or even exacerbate the divisions within our city. It is taking two-thirds of all Sydney’s homes over the next 20 years, though on current trends these will be in lower density developments, poorly connected to public transport, which inhibits walking or cycling. Western Sydney by contrast currently creates 14,000 people of working age each year but jobs for only 8000 and many of them are low paid. It enjoys the economic and social benefits of higher density, which means that jobs and services are easily walkable or accessed by mass transit, now understood to be key attributes of cities that succeed for all their citizens. The one to the east of Parramatta has most of the new higher paid jobs, most of the public transport network, fewest new migrants and refugees, and most of the city’s private schools. In reality, Sydney is a city divided by wealth and health.Īpart from stubborn islands of poverty and ill health in the inner city and clusters of well-off graduates in and around Westmead and parts of the north-west, there is a clear delineation between a healthier, wealthier Eastern Sydney and the poorer relation in West and Southwest Sydney. It has put us to sleep when real energy, urgency and focus are required to tackle this problem. Self celebration of Australia as the land of the “fair go” has blinded us to the reality of disadvantage amidst plenty. Though there are complex reasons behind this, a full understanding needs to start with some simple honesty. Yes, that’s right, in a very key indicator of inequality Sydney might just have a worse record than London. That was bad enough but the gap in London at its worst never reached 20 years. Those of us working to transform East London had discovered that for every Tube station going eastwards from the centre of London, life expectancy dropped by a year. Having worked in East London for over a decade before I came to Australia I was familiar with the reality of a divided city. At its most extreme the gap between average life expectancy in an Eastern Suburb of your choice and Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west is 20 years. The Retrofitting Suburbia website is here.Research based on new Census data has shown that life expectancy goes down dramatically as you travel west in Sydney. Such ideas could prove fruitful for the east end looking for water quality improvement.Īn in-depth interview with the authors with Vice can be found here. ![]() Closer to home, the authors look at creating more walkable neighborhoods that are less car dependent, and urging social opportunities through shared spaces like the “third place” (defined as the location most frequented by people when not at home or work).Īnother interesting concept lies in repurposing commercial developments into ecological corridors and stormwater treatment “parks”, by regreening and removing hard surfaces such as paving. ![]() The book records 32 recent examples of ‘suburban retrofits’ like turning failed malls into places to live and work and massive parking lots into recreation opportunities. This thought provoking study looks at how suburban design transformed the world, and its implications that no long suit the living needs of a majority of the population. Enter Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges, a new book by June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Though the east end of Long Island purports to be an upstanding case in preservation of ‘rural character’, in many instances our urban planning has led to suburban development and all of its trappings, including strip malls, office parks, box stores and especially unwalkable neighborhoods built for cars. Many say that the American Dream promised by suburbia is long dead, if it ever existed at all.
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