Clover’s extreme makeover for Circular Quay, Darling Harbour and more……

A Report in the Sydney Morning Herald says that tearing down the Cahill Expressway, moving Circular Quay railway station, remaking Darling Harbour and building a huge convention centre over the tracks at Central are part of the City of Sydney’s grand vision for 2030, to be made public today.

The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, wants to transform Sydney into a truly “green, global and connected” metropolis in the most comprehensive long-term strategy for the city since Martin Place was reclaimed as a pedestrian thoroughfare and the Queen Victoria Building was revitalised decades ago.

The city would be greener as well as sleeker, with much of the city sourcing its power from local, gas-fired power plants.  George Street would be transformed from a car and bus gridlock into a pedestrian-friendly, light rail thoroughfare.

The long-derided Monorail, Cahill Expressway and Western Distributor would be pulled down and parking space in the city would be cut to deter people from driving into the city centre.

This glimpse into the future is revealed in the council’s draft Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan – a fusion of ideas put forward by the Danish urban planner Jan Gehl, some of the city’s leading architects and economists, and thousands of people across NSW during the past 12 months.

The most far-reaching ideas are the Darling Harbour and Central Station redevelopments. The Western Distributor would be buried under a sprawling new Darling Harbour park, a project paid for by selling the convention and exhibition centres to developers for apartment blocks.

The flyovers would be demolished and the road brought back to street level and about 250 metres of the distributor would go under Pyrmont to reach the Anzac Bridge. The new park would be built over the top of the distributor, creating a green space for city workers stretching from the waterfront to Haymarket.  It would be 80 per cent of the size of Hyde Park and consume the area occupied by the Entertainment Centre.

Huge new convention and entertainment centres, along with shops, units and open space, would be built over the tracks between Central and Cleveland Street. This alone would add about 600,000 square metres of office, retail and residential floor space to the city, as well as new green areas and open space.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, said the strategy deserved attention and respect, and the Government would work with the council to determine what could be jointly achieved, saying, “Sydney has huge unrealised potential and there are still too many legacies of bad planning from the ’50s and ’60s that we need to overcome”.

Cr Moore said: “Sydney can be one of the world’s leading green cities and become internationally recognised as an environmental leader with sustainable development, sustainable transport and sustainable green energy transformers. This can be our point of competitive advantage with other world cities.”

Cr Moore is launching the plan as she heads to her first mayoral re-election campaign in September. The council has yet to cost the plan and Cr Moore admits it could go ahead only with co-operation from government agencies, the private sector, landowners and residents.

Under the plan, the under-used Darling Drive, behind the convention and exhibition centre at Darling Harbour, would be buried under new mixed-use developments and become the main thoroughfare between the Anzac Bridge and Broadway. The ever-clogged Harris Street would become relatively peaceful, similar to Bourke Street in Surry Hills.

The redevelopment would remove the barrier between Surry Hills and Chippendale and enable the extension of a George Street public transport corridor to Redfern and Botany Road.

A spokeswoman for RailCorp said it was open to discussions on how railway services and property would be affected, as well as any technical aspects of the plan.

The plan adopts many of the ideas in last year’s Gehl report, including three public squares along George Street at Circular Quay, Town Hall and Central. Cr Moore said history had shown how important it was to set targets for the city’s growth.

The council had overseen “history-making developments” in its time, some met by strong political opposition, but “the vision of planners and urban designers and the commitment of the community” had improved city life for decades to come.

The executive director of the Property Council of Australia, Ken Morrison, described the draft document as an exciting and bold vision but urged the city council to further develop its long-term planning strategies, particularly height limits, to accommodate growth in the city centre.

The council will consider the draft on April 7 and it will go on public exhibition 10 days later.

A Report by The Mole from The Sydney Morning Herald