Essay On Pyrmont

About Pyrmont

Pyrmont is located 2 km west of Sydney CBD. It is situated on Sydney Harbor and so many of the houses and establishments harbor bridge views. Pyrmont is bounded by the shoreline of Port Jackson in the north, Pirrama Road, Murray Street and Pyrmont Street in the east, Fig Street in the south and Wattle Street and Blackwattle Bay in the west (City of Sydney Community Profile, 2014). Pyrmont was once a key component of Sydney’s industrial docklands, and so as a result the physical environment is filled with old shipyards and factories which developers have maintained the external shell of, but refurbished the interior into sophisticated offices and apartments. (Commentary for photo story, Mrs. Mitchell , 6th August 2014)

In Pyrmont

the population is estimated to be 11,618, with 5,911 males and 5,707 females. The average age of the Pyrmont population is 32 years of age, which five years below the Australian average. The majority (39.5%) of people who live in Pyrmont were born in Australia. The next top response for country of birth was china (6.3%) and England (5.8%). Only 53% of Pyrmont’s population speak English as their first language, which shows how multicultural its population is (Pyrmont Demographics, 2011)

Aim Of Fieldwork
Urban consolidation is a major process occurring in Pyrmont, especially during the twentieth century.

Urban consolidation is the process of increasing the amount of medium to high density housing in areas that already have urban infrastructure in place. ( Pearson, 2014)

It aims to reduce the environmental impacts and government expenses caused by urban sprawl. By increasing housing density, homes built on ‘quarter acre’ blocks are subdivided to accommodate units in suburbs such as Pyrmont. (McIsaac, Trethewy, Zuylen., 2007, page 162)

Pyrmont’s community and its local government have juxtaposing responses to urban consolidation. Through mainly my primary fieldwork I conducted and Geography Focus 2 for secondary research, I will investigate this

issue.

Nature of Issue
Australia’s population is increasingly growing. In 1901, Australia’s most populated areas where Sydney and Melbourne (both with populations around 500 000). Today the proportion of Australians living in large city’s has domestically risen from 34% to 63% (McIsaac, Trethewy, Zuylen., 2007, page 162)). Specifically in the suburb of Pyrmont where its population is rapidly climbing as the population is predicted to grow from 11,618 to approximately 20,000 by 2021. (McIsaac, Trethewy, Zuylen., 2007, page 171)
In order to accommodate Pyrmont’s population increase its local government have put Pyrmont through Urban Consolidation through a mix of high-density and medium-rise residential buildings being built. It is also estimated that the area will require 7500 new dwelling, in addition to the 1400 existing dwellings to cater for Pyrmont’s population increase. (McIsaac, Trethewy, Zuylen., 2007, page 171)

This urban consolidation that is occurring in the Pyrmont area has caused many mixed views and opinions from both the local community and the local government. The local Pyrmont government sees urban consolidation as a positive for the Pyrmont area. Their aim for the urban consolidation was to provide an area to expand the offices from the CBD to, which back in the 1990’s when the government came up with this strategy; the CBD was experiencing a boom in office construction. (Searle, 2007, page 6)
Many members of the Pyrmont community oppose this and believe that the construction of more high-rises needs to be stopped, as the population density is already extremely high, at 124.97 persons pre hectare. (City of Sydney Community Profile, 2014) This is higher than majority of Sydney’s suburbs, even though Pyrmont is Sydney’s smallest suburb. Others believe that it is prime relaste and we should be taking advantage of that. This has caused the community to become completely divided about the plans.

Findings
During the late 1990’s, people began to want to live an urban lifestyle and viewed the inner city as an exciting place to live. Businessmen and women were also drawn to the inner city as it provided them a place to live that was in close proximity to their work. (Searle, 2007, page 6) The local Pyrmont government took advantage of this high demand for property in the inner city of Sydney, and Pyrmont’s redevelopment scheme became focused on high-rise apartment development, also known as urban consolidation. Majority of these high-rises that were built were on government land, as a result the government have been receiving a massive profit of the blocks of land. They then place the money where it is needed (building new roads, maintain landmarks and heritage listed buildings etc.) the government responded to urban consolidation on a positive note. For them this urban consolidation provides them with a lot of gain. And so as a result they government is enforcing high-density policies, which are implemented by restricting the supply of peripheral land and , under the threat of taking away their planning powers, coercing councils to rezone land for higher densities. (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2010)
The community however has divided views on urban consolidation.

There are many different reasons why but majority of the Pyrmont population disagree with the urban consolidation that is occurring in Pyrmont and want it to be stopped. Some people believe that high-density housing is environmentally damaging. High-density living creates a lager number of people per hectare, who all use our natural resources, which causes more greenhouse gases to be emitted into our atmosphere. . (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2010)

Other members of the Pyrmont community see the population density increasing as a spatial issue as parking your car near your residency would become next to impossible. As well as the parking issue they have a lot of concerns that, with the continued urban consolidation the few green spaces in the area may be replaced with multistory apartment blocks.

Another issue raised by the community is the concern that the high-density living is destroying the heritage of the Pyrmont area. Although some buildings exteriors have been preserved, their heritage is still lost as they are surrounded by modern bight coloured buildings. This is seen in figure 1 and 2, where the juxtaposing buildings are placed on each side of Bowman Street in

Pyrmont.
Figure 2
Figure 1
Although these evident opposing views, the council has made great progress in working with the community not against it. A prime example of this collaboration between the council and community was when the water police closed their headquarters at Elizabeth Macarthur Bay. Its was 80 000 square meters of foreshore and basically undeveloped land. Developers saw this land as prime real state and wanted to build luxury high-rise residencies, worth thirty million dollars on it. The community however saw the perfect opportunity for open parklands for recreation, which was much need in the Pyrmont area.
The council had to make the decision and first proposed the luxury apartment blocks to the community in a newspaper article. They were not happy when they saw this and made their opinion on the matter clear through protests, lobbying of political representatives and petitions to parliament.
The Pyrmont government heard what the community was saying and agreed with them, and so they city of Sydney Council purchased the site from Sydney Harbor Foreshore Authority for eleven million dollars. (McIsaac, Trethewy, Zuylen., 2007, page 224-225)

Recommendations
From the extensive research conducted throughout this report the concluded recommendations to the New South Wales Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority are that urban consolidation is occurring in Pyrmont at a rapid rate and the Pyrmont community, overall, do not see this as a positive trend for the physical appearance of Pyrmont. But as well as the community’s opinion the council needs to create residencies to the ever-increasing population of Pyrmont. As a result of these finding an appropriate course of action from the New South Wales Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority would be to allow the community to have more power when it comes to choosing the appearance and location of the new urban consolidation developments. As well as this the community should have more opportunities to voice their opinions and suggestions. This could be done by posting plans on the Sydney City Council website with a comments section or even placing a basic over view of the plans in the residents mailboxes.
Another course of action that the New South Wales Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority should consider when developing the new high-density living apartments is that they should be planning them strategically so that the apartment blocks are as environmentally friendly as possible, keeping their emissions as low as possible.