Greater Sydney Region Plan: where to next

Recent media reporting on the limited public transport coverage in Mount Druitt suburbs and on high-speed rail (HSR) options for the Sydney to Newcastle corridor raises important micro and macro issues about where to go next in planning Greater Sydney.

Nearly eight years on since the last (2018) Greater Sydney Regional Plan (GSRP) – A Metropolis of Three Cities, it appears timely to reflect on lessons learnt and ways forward.

Core to the 2018 vision was the need to address the spatial inequality of access to economic and social opportunities across Greater Sydney, so much so that the vision statement included:

As the population of Greater Sydney is projected to grow to 8 million over the next 40 years, and with almost half of that population residing west of Parramatta, rebalancing economic and social opportunities will leverage that growth and deliver the benefits more equally and equitably across Greater Sydney. Page 6.

A range of initiatives was identified to address this spatial inequality, several of which are already delivered, such as the new north-south rail service and various initiatives related to the Aerotropolis, including the new Bradfield Town Centre and the Advanced Manufacturing Readiness Facility.

With significant population growth projected in Western Sydney into the long term, it can be expected that a new plan would outline new strategies and actions to continue to address this spatial inequality, such as initiatives to further diversify employment opportunities, and clarifying the sequencing of the remaining rail projects, providing direction to the private sector on opportunities to maximise accessible communities from the outset.

In managing the significant growth projected for Greater Sydney, a new plan will need to incorporate the New South Wales government’s Transport-Oriented Development Program.

A range of initiatives was identified to address this spatial inequality, several of which are already delivered, such as the new north-south rail service and various initiatives related to the Aerotropolis, including the new Bradfield Town Centre and the Advanced Manufacturing Readiness Facility.

While not dissimilar to the 2014 plan in supporting development at railway stations, this recent initiative (2023) is more targeted, a good refinement that can allow development to be coordinated with infrastructure investments.

Considering that projections suggest sustained population growth into the long term, the program will likely be required for decades to come.

Consequently, a new GSRP could outline the criteria and assessment guidelines (including minimum requirements, such as open space, together with height, and FSR controls) for identifying new TODs. Thus, shifting day-to-day planning activities to how the guidelines will be applied to new TODs, rather than arguing the strategic merit of a proposal.

The guiding strategic plans could also consider the concept of TOD indices (Cucuzzella et al., 2022) and add accessibility to goods, services, and jobs as a criterion (Beyond TODs, Dalheim, 2025).

Inclusion of criteria for TODs in the GSRP brings up Division 3.1 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 No 203 and what GSRPs and district plans should cover and include (Sections 3.3 & 3.4), and critically, the hierarchy of compliance, specifically down to the council’s local environmental plans, including planning proposals (Section 3.8).

The greater the clarity provided in strategic plans, the less need there is to argue strategic intent at the local level, where the focus should be on application.

This should give developers and the wider community greater transparency on the NSW government’s intentions and what is anticipated at a local level.

Regarding transparency, the preparation of the 2018 GSRP included the release of around 50 background reports that informed the plan.

Retaining such reports in the public domain on government websites not only provides context for what informed the plan but also serves as a resource that could be utilised for comparative purposes in the future.

Regarding the potential content of a new GSRP, with the first version of regional, district, and local plans completed, there is potential to increase the level of detail by moving content up one level.

For example, many councils have identified local centres of importance, which could be included in district plans to recognise that designation.

This would enhance recognition and understanding of the breadth and depth of centres across Greater Sydney, and, potentially, depending on their location, some could be candidates for future TODs, recognising that there will need to be many more.

Infrastructure Australia’s HSR evaluation report raises questions on longer-term accessibility issues for consideration in the next GSRP. Some additional considerations that could be addressed are:

• Autonomous vehicles and the influence of AI on transport networks and accessibility choices, recognising Transport for NSW already has a strategy in this area, NSW Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Readiness Strategy. What is required is a discussion of the potential land-use and transport implications of this technology, which is likely to begin to emerge in the short term, Sydney Morning Herald (14 November 2025) and McKinsey (2024)
• Mode shift away from private vehicles, from an early article in The Fifth Estate, as Greater Sydney grows towards 8 million people, it will need to accommodate in the order of 4.2 million daily car trips. It is unlikely that this is possible. Consequently, not only is there a need to support the development of TODs, but they also need to be located to ensure accessibility to goods, services, and jobs. Recent research (Beyond TODs, Dalheim, 2025) suggests that of the 183 stations across Greater Sydney, only 51 have high levels of accessibility. The study indicates that locating new TODs is just as much an infrastructure decision (such as schools and parks) as it is a residential development decision, and that targeted investments can expand the list of stations with good accessibility to economic, community, and social assets.
• Aligning greenfield and urban renewal decisions to capital works programs. Currently, decisions (planning proposals and/or SEPPs) on where new greenfield or urban renewal development opportunities are to be facilitated do not require whole-of-government sign-off. There would be a benefit to such an action in maximising coordination between new growth and delivery agencies’ 10 year capital works plans.
• Housing affordability is now a global challenge in the Western world, where the impacts are increasingly societal, and to date, the benefits from actions to address it are limited. With action and change likely to be needed for the long term, it appears to be a space that needs consensus across all levels of government and both sides of politics.
• Mitigating and adapting to climate change increasingly needs to be front and centre in metropolitan plans. For Greater Sydney, coastal inundation is likely to become an increasingly challenging problem. The NSW Government’s Coastal Management Framework provides an integrated approach that covers coastal inundation; a new GSRP needs to outline a land-use framework to support this Framework, which, among other things, should start to outline the need to explore options such as retreat and defend, including costs and who is responsible for funding and delivery.
• Aboriginal Country, community, and culture. To date, regional and district plans for Greater Sydney have, in the main, simply included an acknowledgement of Country. Considering that, in 2038, Sydney, as a settlement, will be 250 years old, there appears to be an opportunity, at the same time, to provide a pathway for how planning for Greater Sydney also responds to Australia’s First Nations people, who have been custodians of Country for around 65,000 years (2500 generations).

In exploring these issues, consideration will be required of whether new objectives, strategies and actions are needed to address them. This point raises the broader issue of the need to review the current plan to establish what is working, what needs augmentation, and which new elements are required to set the next direction for Greater Sydney, including the background material that informs the new GSRP.

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