The real estate
Enough about politics and international relations. It just makes me angry. So this issue I intend to turn to that most Sydney of all topics: real estate.
Analysis 1 - Geography informs history
Sydney is built around four large inlets along the east coast of Australia. In the north is Broken Bay, where the Hawkesbury River (called the Nepean River at its source and for most of its journey - the early settlers thought they'd found two separate rivers) has its mouth. About 25 km of coastline separates it from Port Jackson (Sydney Harbor), the mouth of the Parramatta River. Another 15 km south is Botany Bay, into which flows the Cooks and the Georges Rivers. Furthest south, another 4 or so kilometers is Port Hacking, by far the smallest and least navigable, mouth of the Hacking River. To the west, about 60 km as the crow flies, are the foothills of the Blue Mountains. By and large, these geographic features describe the limits of Sydney's population basin, and define its history and growth.
Cook and Banks had recommended settlement on Botany Bay but Philip, the first governor, had been unhappy with the water supply therein and opted for Port Jackson, near the small Tank Stream that provided fresh water for the early colony. Settlement was initially along the harbor and Parramatta River and thence to the immediate environs on the south shore of Port Jackson and its ancillary bays. A small settlement on Botany Bay was largely in despite of the French after La Perouse's expedition's visit. Eventually, as population growth led to expansion of the colony, settlements were established along the other rivers and along the roads that joined the early settlements - in Macquarie's time (c. 1810-1820), that meant along the Nepean River and the Parramatta Road.
The northern shore of Port Jackson was gradually settled, as were the environs of Botany Bay. Nowadays, the areas between Port Jackson and Broken Bay to the east are variously called North Sydney and the northern beaches, towards the west, north of the harbor, are the Hills District and the Kuring-gai Chase, with the Macquarie Towns at the western edge. On the southern side of Port Jackson, north of the Cooks River, is the inner city, the eastern suburbs, the southern beaches and inner west. Further west, along the Parramatta River and out to Penrith, are the western suburbs. Further south, between the Cooks and Georges Rivers, along Botany Bay, is the St George district. Thence to the south west, towards Liverpool and Campbelltown is what generally called 'the southwest' or the Macarthur district (named for the early pioneer of the sheep trade, not for the megalomaniacal general). Between Botany Bay and Port Hacking is the Shire (the Sutherland Shire, not the residence of hobbits, although strange creatures live there). We live in the St George district.
Given the relative size of the basin in which Sydney is located, and the fact that conurbation has now enclosed Berowra (40 km north), Penrith (54 km west) and Campbelltown (55 km south west) within the greater metropolitan area, you'd think that there was plenty of room for expansion in Sydney, despite its 4 millions or so population. But you'd be wrong. For three reasons. First, the metropolitan area includes large swathes of preserved natural land: the Kuringgai Chase National Park in the north and the Royal National Park in the south being the two largest but not the only ones. Secondly, until very recently, there were almost no residential buildings in the Central Business District. Thirdly, until recently, residences were by and large detached bungalows on quarteracre blocks.
Analysis 2 - Consolidated
The newer suburban developments, in the north-west, west and south-west, tend still to be of the detached single residence style and attract interest for that reason, despite the distance from the CBD. Although this is mitigated by the fact that many services and businesses - especially government enterprises - have decentralised, with growth of mini-CBDs in Parramatta and Penrith (west), Campbelltown (southwest), Hurstville (south), the Hills (the centre of IT and related enterprises) and North Sydney and Chatswood (on the north shore). There has also been a major change in the structure of the CBD with the erection of a large number of high-rise apartment blocks within the CBD or on its immediate fringes, meaning that the city is not quite as dead as it used to be at night and on weekends. Additionally, improved transport, especially in roads and in commuter trains, has meant that a number of satellite settlements have become dormitory towns for the greater Sydney area - particularly on the Central Coast around Gosford, north of BrokenBay, in the lower Blue Mountains, and on the south coast, near Wollongong.
Even so, there continues to be population pressure in the greater Sydney area. This pressure largely arises from migration, rather than population growth by birth-rate, and is indicative of the sentiment that, given a choice, people would rather live in Sydney, than elsewhere in Australia. In addition to the growth of CBD residence, the new suburbs on the metropolitan fringe and the growth of satellite dormitory communities, these population pressures have also led to (sub)urban consolidation. This has taken two forms: high density and medium density. High-density consolidation has seen green space, former industrial or semi-industrial land or a number of residential blocks turned into high-rise apartment blocks. Near us this is a particular blight in the vicinity of Rockdale where upwards of a dozen such complexes have been built in the last decade - the slums of the future. Similar sets of edifices are being erected near Wolli Creek and Turella stations, just a little further north and a little west of Rockdale. Meriton, the brainchild of developer Harry Triguboff, has been particularly apt at this highrise and high-density sort of development, buying land at reasonably cheap prices immediately adjacent to new through-roads, freeways and railway corridors. Medium-density consolidation usually involves development on what was either one or at most two adjacent residential blocks. These are converted either to low-rise apartments or to villas/townhouses. The latter are at best semi-detached, but more usually a series of one or two-storey houses with walls common to houses on each side.
Synthesis 1 - On the street where we live
Where we live, in the middle of Illawarra Street in Allawah, it's got pretty consolidated - but largely in a medium density sort of way. Allow me to elucidate. Once upon an era, about 30 odd years ago, Illawarra Street was like the rest of Sydney suburbia, largely single-storey detached bungalows on reasonably deep lots. The first round of consolidation occurred in the early 1970s, when the Council limits on multioccupancy dwellings were very strict: nothing over 3 storeys and only when two or more lots were combined. The block of units in which we dwell is from that time - it occupies what were numbers 57 and 59 Illawarra Street is threes storeys high and has 15 units - 12 two-bedroom and 3 one-bedroom units. Probably about half the street was consolidated in like manner around the same time. In the last decade, a second round of consolidation has taken place, to the extent that, from Railway Parade in the north to Norman Street in the south, ie about 80 per cent of the length of Illawarra Street, only one bungalow remains, #73 on the corner of Norman St. (I should point out that, on the mini-block from Norman Street to the culde- sac, just about all the residences remain bungalows.) We moved here in 1994, just as the new consolidation was starting, with a series of 'modern' apartment blocks being built around and opposite us to satisfy the influx of east Asian immigrants. Hurstville, the next suburb, is one of the three main centres for east Asian population in Sydney - together with Chatswood and the Haymarket end of the city. These new buildings are largely in white brick, although some are concrete (and hence subject to possible 'concrete cancer' a blight of large buildings to which the eight-storey block in which my father has a unit has succumbed). Two doors down from us, the penultimate bungalow has been removed from our block. In its place is a new sort of medium density development for the street: our first set of villas (or 'town-houses' as the real estate agency has dubbed them). A block that formerly had a single dwelling now is being infested with six attached two-and-ahalf- storey residences. They are no better than, and somewhat thinner than, the workers' terraces that were once replete in the inner city suburbs like Surry Hills and Balmain.
One of the advantages of the building in which we live is that there are virtually no common walls with neighbors: the units on either side of us are largely separated by stairwells and other smart architectural features. This won't be the case with these squeezedin villas, cheek by jowl with their neighbors and with, by and large, no clearance between the new buildings and the neighboring blocks of units - not to mention that some will look straight into the kitchen of our second-storey unit. There goes the Sunday morning nude walks around the house.
Synthesis 2 - Collateral damage - general
All 'advances' contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction and give rise to a series of problems unimagined by their progenitors. Urban consolidation provides an instant response to the need for more residences for an increasingly popular city but brings with it its own inherent problems. Many of the suburban areas which are consolidated do not have the amenities to service the new residences. That's not only an absence of things like shops but also inadequate public transport infrastructure and roads leading to the throughways that are not large enough to satisfy new traffic demands. In the case of Illawarra Street, this is partly manifesting itself in a lack of curbside parking as there are more cars per unit than garage spaces for them - even in those units with garages. Additionally, not all Councils are insisting on complementary greenspace and sufficient play areas in the consolidated localities. The influx of numbers, and of young families, into medium-density areas exposes such short-comings. How it must be in areas like Rockdale where high-density development has taken place at a rapid rate with no commensurate increase in amenity, I shudder to think. But then we have models for such developments: the Housing Commission high-rises of the fifties and sixties which quickly became the cynosures of poverty, dispossession, disillusionment and crime.
Synthesis 3 - Collateral damage - particular
We have been the victims of unintended consequences in the construction of the new set of town-houses two doors down from us. While we have had the occasional infestation of that other urban blight, the cockroach, the blight had turned into a flood with the forced migration of the former residences of number sixty-three when their home was demolished. We aren't a particularly messy couple, although we aren't neatness fanatics either. Nonetheless, we have experienced an increasing bug population and decided to take some remedial action about it. Last week (c 20 November) we went on the offensive, cleaning out the storage cupboards and larder and killing a small number of the foe, discovering a minor nest in and around the hot water unit. However, stage 2 of Operation De-Bug, a pincer movement attack on the area in and around the fridge, resulted in a routing of the enemy after discovery of the major headquarters of its Republican Guard. Moving the fridge from its corner, exposed the enemy to twin attacks by both conventional methods (foot-stamping mainly) and chemical weapons - largely Mortein surface spray. We think that there may still be some guerrilla units near the washing machine - the last remaining heat source - and some remnants of the original hot water unit population but in severely reduced and largely ineffective numbers. Certainly we have seen no great outbreak of resistance activities nor sneak attacks in the nights since the Battle of the Refrigerator Space. Further bulletins from the front will be available after they have been cleared by the appropriate senior figures.
The message of hope
The current spate of suburban consolidation is meeting the needs of our times, with its restricted (if slightly increasing) population growth through immigration. As the trends in movement from country to city increase, and as Sydney becomes even more the beacon for the poor and distressed from elsewhere in Australia, medium-density living is going to start going the way of the bungalow and there will be increasing demand for high-rise, high-density residences. Our city will start to resemble (if it hasn't already) the dystopian cities predicted in Golden Age Sf.
But, by that time, Cath and I will have found that place in the mountains, close by the sea, where we can live in relative (rural) isolation.
First written: December 2003
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