The Australian dream: Is it sustainable?

29 October 2003

By 2010, Sydney will have close to 4.5 million people. Facing such growth, how are we to live the Australian dream and create communities which are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable?

That is the key issue being addressed at a forum, co-presented by the Centre for Sydney at UNSW, which opens on Friday, October 31, at the Museum of Sydney. City Living: Creating Sydney's Sustainable Communities investigates the success of planned community development and explores the questions they raise for our urban future.

Associate professor Robert Freestone, Program Head, Planning and Urban Development in the Faculty of the Built Environment (FBE) is one of the co-convenors of the forum which involves developers, planners, architects, academic and the community.

A program of top speakers headed by design commentator Elizabeth Farrelly includes FBE's James Weirick, professor, Landscape Architecture, Deo Prasad, associate professor and director of the UNSW Centre for a Sustainable Built Environment, Bruce Judd, director, Urban Development and Design Program and Philip Cox, partner in Cox, Richardson Architects and Planner and adjunct professor at UNSW.

"'Master-planned communities' are relatively new, American-influenced forms of development usually organised around a complete and manicured living package of house, land, open space and community facilities," says Dr Freestone.

They include developments such as Breakfast Point on the Parramatta River, Jackson's Landing at Pyrmont and Liberty Grove at Homebush Bay.

Dr Freestone says the forum will debate what these places mean "in design, environmental, economic and social terms against the broader backdrop of concerns with sustainable growth management for the Sydney metropolitan area?"

For further information on sustainable communities click here.