Higher Density Coming to Sydney's North Shore … Very Very Soon

The NSW Government has been talking for years about the renewal of older suburban areas with good general and transport facilities as part of its strategy to get more dwellings in Sydney without sprawl (after all The Metropolitan Strategy identifies that Sydney needs approximately 640,000 new homes by the year 2031 and that’s a lot of development).

But, now they’ve done something about it by approving plans for 4500 dwellings in six north shore suburbs when the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, approved the Ku-ring-gai Town Centres Local Environmental Plan.  See the media release here.

The plan includes the following development strategies – 

• allowing six storey developments near railway stations,
• permitting small strip shopping centres to become will be transformed into town centres in places like Roseville, Lindfield, Gordon, Pymble and Turramurra
• developing St Ives as a future town centre
• approving another 5500 new dwellings now
• preparing to approve another 10,000 extra dwellings in Ku-ring-gai

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that residents of these north shore  garden suburbs ‘campaigned hard against the plan, arguing it is an overdevelopment that will see the destruction of up to 700 heritage homes … and that the rail line and Pacific Highway are at capacity and the new homes will choke the area’. 

This is nothing new as the Ku-ring-gai local residents were instrumental it ending the dual occupancy frenzy in Sydney during the later 1990s by opposing most developments of that kind and leading to changes in the LEP and planning controls.

But, the centralising of planning powers in the NSW Department of Planning over the last few years and the development of the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy has by-passed local views in Sydney’s north shore that oppose higher density.

And, if you work in strata then it seems Sydney’s north shore will also be a better market than ever before.

Francesco ...