As Auckland sets out to plan its ‘urban future’ – aiming to steer away from the planning mistakes of the past and set a new course – Parramatta’s council is also looking forward.

Parramatta , which describes itself as the hub of Western Sydney , has been casting forward to see how it will be placed 20 or so years from now.

Parramatta’s previous Lord Mayor David Borger, last year gave a speech which underscored the area’s importance to both Sydney and Australia. 

He said Parramatta is currently the sixth largest CBD in the country, but by 2030 it will be the ranked fourth – after Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The Lord Mayor said he was confident that Parramatta will rise to all the challenges to be faced over the next 20 years, but he painted an alternative, darker picture, which he says must be avoided.

“When I was first Lord Mayor - for a year at the end of last century - I spoke about how Parramatta was in danger of becoming ‘Dallas on the cheap’. In my sights were those who assumed a city would just grow without proper urban design, without proper cultural and social planning, without controls and without civic imagination.”  
Mr Borger said this had largely been avoided. However, to illustrate the point, the mayor took his audience on an imaginary time-travel journey to 2030.

“There is the danger (by that time) that ugly high-rise buildings may crowd out all public space and sunshine, that the historic Georgian grid of our city with its small laneways will be completely overpowered by residential buildings that have become poverty traps and high-rise ghettos.

“In 2030 safety has become the No.1 issue; everyone is in their cars; few people walk because of security fears. There is no investment in cultural expression or exploration, no community bonding, no investment in the arts. “Parramatta's lively, small, retail sector has dried up. And now big business could also be leaving. 

“After the Parramatta boom of the early 21st century, business is now being completely lured to the huge campus-style business parks in Ryde, NW and at Sydney Olympic Park.
“These parks may be plastic paradises with no life...but they’re crime free and they come with car parking. In the suburbs, elite gated communities have sprung up, free from planning controls, and illegal waterfront development has privatised the foreshore. Outside the windy city - so dead at night - the neighbourhood centres are also decaying as they desperately jostle for limited funds to maintain infrastructure.

“As for the tourists, they no longer come to Parramatta to admire the birthplace of the nation. Those heritage sites which have survived have been crowded out by badly designed overbuilding. All historical context is lost.”
After that ‘bad news’ the Lord Mayor of course went on to say that Parramatta 2030 need not be like that - and that with the city’s current path, it won't be like that. 

Consultation
Urging consultation with a community and engaging them to evolve the right goals and the plans to reach them, David Borger told of the success of the 2000-strong Parramatta City Council's Residents' Panel to help council better understand the community's needs and aspirations, to involve community members in council decision-making, to empower the community and build ongoing partnerships. More than 2000 people - deliberately encouraged from all ages and backgrounds - volunteered to join the panel and provide feedback into council's policies, services and strategies.

Then through a series of workshops, the residents panel evolved the seven goals or destinations for what became the Parramatta 2025 Strategic Plan. Nearly a quarter of the panel ranked land and water protection as the most important priority. Linking people and places with sustainable transport and communication networks was the second top priority. (At right, former Lord Mayor Of Parramatta, David Borger).

Liveable and distinctive neighbourhoods were also judged important, as was maintaining a healthy and compassionate society. The other goals were to have prosperous and socially responsible businesses; a diverse and cohesive society; and a city that is innovative and inspirational.

The former Lord Mayor listed a number of major advances being made to improve Parramatta for 2030:

• The Parramatta River: After decades of turning our backs on our river, we are learning now that it is our best asset. By 2030 the “insane” car parks on the river frontage will have gone. By 2030 council will have reclaimed all waterfront access.
   
• Telling the Parramatta Story, an ambitious heritage and tourism project, currently being launched. The river, and the trails and bikeways which spin off it, will be the starting point for a well-connected, thematic exploration of the stories which make up Parramatta. It will reinvigorate the tourist market of Sydney and be a tourist stop en route to other destinations. 
• A far-reaching ten-year Arts and Cultural Plan that will aim to reverse the creative brain drain of young talented people from Parramatta to the bright lights and urban villages of Sydney. “This is a region of nearly two million people. It is the third largest economy in Australia. But while this economy grows, we still face the task of showing that Parramatta is a city where you can happily live and work, that it's an attractive, dynamic place where you can stay, you can grow and thrive,” he said.
• By 2030 we will have finally buried those old images that Western Sydney is some kind of cultural desert. I'm talking about facilities - mostly just valuable city space - for artists, writers and performers. But I’m also talking about ways of attracting filmmakers, designers, architects, multimedia and technology companies, advertising agencies and all those who create ideas and content. 
• By 2030 Parramatta will finally have a public gallery - and finally the capacity to host significant travelling exhibitions. Civic Place is the largest urban revitalisation project so far in NSW this century. It will have finished in 2016. And at its heart will be the New Generation Centre, a fashionably converged blending of heritage centre, new library and gallery. 
• By 2030, a biotechnology hub will have further developed around Westmead Hospital, which already is the largest research hospital in Australia. The region will be world famous for its medical imaging, cancer and pharmaceutical research.
   
• The completion of the Justice Precinct next year (illustration below) will confirm it as one of the largest legal precincts in Australia and one well-connected to the expanded legal faculties of the University of Western Sydney nearby.
   
  By 2030 the Civic Place project will have been completed for 15 years. There'll be a mix of commercial and sophisticated retail space, five public squares, community and cultural facilities and Western Sydney's first independent cinema. The 250 apartments, also in Civic Place, will herald a new residential living in the city.
• By 2030 the night-time economy - the development of which we are now researching in a collaborative project with the University of Western Sydney - will be booming. 
• Free broadband services throughout the CBD will accelerate the trend to people working anywhere and anytime, 24/7, in their inner city residences, in cafes, or in city work places at night or day.
• The establishment early this century of an urban design team, supported by an advisory panel of designers, will have lifted the standard of building design and urban layout in Parramatta.

“Our city has a rich cultural diversity and a reputation for being one of the most harmonious local government areas in NSW,” the Lord Mayor said.

“And councils, of course, also have an important role to build that community capacity and seed the bonds which link neighbours and different communities.

“In 20 years this diversity which is such a feature of Parramatta, and Western Sydney in general, will power an even more dynamic economy. 

"But it will also power a very distinctive culture, an Australian culture but one richly enmeshed and globally connected with other traditions. And that's something worth waiting up to see in 2030. Come to Parramatta - and you'll see it's happening already.”