A proposal for a brand new CBD for Campbelltown as part of Sydney’s fourth city of Macarthur should be given top priority by governments, a major conference will be told today.
According to the plan, over the next 20 years Campbelltown could be transformed culturally and physically into a high rise, high tech city based around its booming health and education precinct, boosted by its growing tourism and arts facilities and powered by a new high-speed rail link to Badgerys Creek Airport.
The priority plan for Campbelltown is one of several which will be outlined at Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue’s Boomtown! Infrastructure Summit in Sydney.
Government, industry and business leaders are discussing the major projects, plans and policy issues impacting the growth of Western Sydney.
Keynote speakers include NSW transport and infrastructure minister Andrew Constance, federal urban infrastructure minister Paul Fletcher and Lucy Turnbull, chief commissioner of Greater Sydney Commission.
Part of the proposal for Campbelltown includes building on the existing connection between Campbelltown Hospital and Western Sydney University, which recently opened a new clinical school on-site as a way to provide state-of-the-art training for students and other health professionals.
With the Macarthur region expected to experience a significant rise in young families, as well as over 65s, within the coming decades, the future development of Campbelltown Hospital and surrounding health precinct will have a strong focus on paediatric and other acute services such as mental health.
Just as Westmead is planning, Campbelltown can grow ancillary services such as medical and academic conferences, health industry research and technology firms and Mayo Clinic type medical tourism from Asia, via the nearby Badgerys Creek Airport.
Dialogue chairman Christopher Brown says that as it stands, the health and education sector currently provides nearly 30 percent of all jobs in Campbelltown, and there is increasing public and private sector interest in leveraging existing assets to help expand this industry even further.
“Health and education are arguably the two biggest economic drivers in Western Sydney and the work that is being done now to establish a one-stop-shop for medical services and training, at the heart of one of the fastest growing regions, will ensure future health demands are met and deliver more opportunities,” Mr Brown said.
“Gone are the days when hospitals were just about beds and emergency wards.
“Like we’ve seen at Westmead, the modern health precinct is about facilitating growth and providing an innovative space that meets a range of different needs and uses.”
Mr Brown says that while some of the projects included in what has been dubbed “Western Sydney’s Over the Horizon Priority list’’ seem overly ambitious, they all had the potential to transform a region that is expected to house more than four million people by 2050.
“We’re talking about a region that over the next 30 years is expected to house a population the approximate size of Western Australia,” Mr Brown said.
According to Deloitte Access Economics, some parts of Western Sydney are expected to experience unprecedented levels of population growth over the coming decades.
The Deloitte Report, Western Sydney in 2050, says that “in the South West region stretching from Bankstown to Camden, the population will increase by 84 percent with a total population of 1.2 million by 2050’’.
“Western Sydney has suffered in the past by a lack of vision when it comes to how we plan and invest in the region, and as a result we’re still playing catch-up,’’ says Mr Brown.
“The dial has started to shift now, through the likes of the Greater Sydney Commission, and its blueprint for how we manage our city’s growth, as well as the recently released Future Transport Strategy, which outlines the connections needed to improve mobility and access.
“But in addition to the major transport and infrastructure projects already being planned in Western Sydney – and the billions of dollars already committed – let’s start to think big and examine some of the over-the-horizon initiatives that can have a similar, transformative impact.”
These type of things were talked about when the original Three Cities plan was released in 1970 when I was on Council but depends on the pollies to fund these things and that changes every times the government changes. A very early priority for the planners is to get the train extended to Camden from Leppington as part of some transport plan for the 150,000 plus that are to be housed in Camden over the next couple of years – it is urgent NOW