Growing Sydney

Abstract

This chapter provides the historical backdrop for subsequent discussions on protection for Sydney’s farmers, analysing the visions of growth that have driven Sydney’s urban development. It examines the extent to which urban planners have addressed, or not, questions of environmental sustainability, urban agriculture, and the co-existence of culturally diverse groups over time. It outlines how the visions for growth guiding Sydney planning have been predominantly defined, from colonial times to the contemporary global city discourse, in a developmentalist paradigm in which economic and physical expansion is seen as the destiny of the city. The chapter then looks at how changes, especially in the 1970s, saw this growth agenda moderated by considerations of social goods such as the inclusion of culturally diverse values in land and of environmental sustainability concerns in the city. Through this analysis it is argued that we are currently in another such critical period where the visions of urban growth need to be redefined to ensure a common future. In creating a more sustainable Sydney, the ‘other’ aspects of the city that contribute to its sustainability, such as urban agriculture, need to be incorporated into plans for development, and viewed as connected to, rather than separate from, economic concerns. They need to be re-visioned, in other words, as an integral part of the urban fabric and a contributor rather than a barrier to the growth of the city.