The City of Sydney is the economic driver of the entire state of NSW, indeed, in many respects, as the financial capital of the South Pacific, it is the economic driver of the nation.

But the city feels like it is in decline – only saved by the opening of the new Metro.  COVID wreaked havoc on Sydney and it has not recovered, but the policies of the City of Sydney Council have not helped.

The same narrow-minded thinking applies to North Sydney – a mini-city satellite so dismal come sunset that it makes Adelaide look like Las Vegas in comparison.

Thanks to former Liberal Premier Mike Baird’s wisdom in selling off electricity assets to pay for a world class new Metro system, we now have a new modern high-speed corridor running right through the CBD spine with a direct connection between Central, the City, Barangaroo and North Sydney and beyond in both directions.

Why is our city so dark at night?  London, Tokyo, New York and Singapore all sparkle with bright lights, animations  and neon at night. Sydney is a retirement village by comparison.  It’s no wonder our night-time economy struggles so badly. Get the lights back on (powered by renewables of course).

It’s time we gave our city some sparkle – bring in some “zhoozh”!.

We need to abolish the height limits completely.  Let’s be bold and invite world class quality development to Pyrmont, Kent and Clarence Streets, to North Sydney and Tech Central.  Bring back the Wow factor and celebrate Sydney as a modern metropolis.

We need to see mixed use development across the CBD.  The idea of the City being separated from homes harks back to the 1960s, when I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched dominated our screens with the American ideal of homes void of any sense of inner-city vibe.  This resulted in the creation of a vacuum in the city when 5pm hits and everyone rushes home to suburban utopia.  The Planners of NSW, and the City of Sydney, embraced that conservative ideas and have clung to it.

It is the planners who think of themselves as the protectors of the future who are holding us back in the conservative past.

COVID has emptied many of the 2^nd and 3^rd grade commercial office buildings.  It’s time for a re-think.

Why not throw out the Apartment Design Guide and accept that in the centre of our city, maybe some smaller apartments, lower ceiling heights, or buildings without balconies, or buildings without the mandated separation from adjoining buildings, or setbacks from the streets, or without the mandated solar access to every bedroom, may actually have big demand from lower income families, couples or singles that want to live in close proximity to where they work?

Open the door to bringing life back to our city.  Bring in the urban population.  Get rid of the nanny-state controls and let the consumer decide if the ADG guidelines are important to them or not.

The Lord Mayor has got herself into a fight over bike lanes.  The cost of land in the Sydney CBD is phenomenal – and the Lord Mayor has made it impossible for Taxis, Ubers and pedestrians to safely and legally get on with their lives – all for the sake of a miniscule trickle of unlicenced, self-entitled, Lycra-clad bike riders.  Sydney’s topography does not lend itself to this.  We are not a flat, densely populated city of 1 million people like Amsterdam. But now the party scene along Oxford Street is up in arms, Clover Moore is under pressure to re-think.

There is a lot to be done to bring life back to the CBD of Sydney.  While North Sydney remains on life support, I remain hopeful.

Let’s get the live-work-play scene happening again with residents in the city.  Let’s turn the lights back on and bring back the sparkle.  Let’s remove the rules and build some world class skyscrapers while we turn those dead commercial buildings into affordable homes for key workers. That should be the plan for the next 4 years for Sydney.

Let’s bring the zhoozh back!

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