Planning for our Future

We stand at the threshold of an exciting future. In the past few years our community has told us the things they love about the City of Ryde and the things that could be done better to make our City more liveable, more desirable and better prepared for the future. With a projected increase in population to over 160,000 residents by 2031, we have an opportunity to use this growth to enhance the City’s prosperity, uniqueness and liveability while planning for the future.

During the year we invested significant resources into planning how we can reshape our City and ensure that we undertake targeted initiatives that meet the needs of our growing and changing community.

We completed our Local Strategic Planning Statement (LSPS), which came into effect on 31 March. This is a keystone document for the City of Ryde, providing a 20-year blueprint for land-use planning within the City. The LSPS sets out our vision and planning priorities, and brings together the Community Strategic Plan and the local planning framework, with existing relevant Council studies, documents, plans and policies to guide future development.

To meet the requirements set out in the Greater Sydney Commission’s Greater Sydney Region Plan – A Metropolis of Three Cities and the North District Plan, we also completed a review of our Local Environmental Plan. As part of this work, we finalised and adopted a Heritage Review that endorsed stronger protection for items and areas of heritage significance across the local community.

We developed our draft Local Housing Strategy, which provides key directions for the future housing supply in the City of Ryde, including planning for housing growth that comprises a mix of dwelling sizes, types and price points, allowing the current population to remain in the local area through different stages of life. The strategy also aims to mitigate the impact of State environmental planning policies by removing multi-dwelling housing from current low density residential zones to ensure the City of Ryde does not lose its identity, become overcrowded or create problems for the future.

One of the things our community values most about living in the City of Ryde is our range of parks, open spaces and sportsgrounds, which are in constant use all year round. To better understand current and likely future sporting, recreational and leisure needs and guide the way we manage and operate our parks and associated facilities, we finalised a number of key park and open space masterplans as part of our ongoing planning program.

For example, the Meadowbank Park and Memorial Park Masterplan will increase sporting capacity within Meadowbank Park while also implementing a range of environmental and active recreation improvements across both parks. The Westminster Park Masterplan will see a synthetic sports field and a new amenities building to better meet the needs of growing numbers of sports groups. The Gannan Park and McCauley Park Masterplan will result in the creation of open spaces that meet the current and future needs of a range of different user groups. The draft ELS Hall Park, Greenwood Park and Booth Reserve Plans of Management will ensure the parks meet current and future sporting, recreational and leisure needs while providing additional environmental protection.

Resilience, response and recovery - the Ryde Resilience Plan 2030

Following a multi-stage community engagement program, preparation of the Ryde Resilience Plan 2030 was completed during the year.

We have long recognised that climate change will result in a range of threats and cascading impacts on our City, involving wider social and economic shocks. In 2019/20 we experienced the last months of a crippling drought with increasing water restrictions, record temperatures, catastrophic bushfires across the length of the eastern seaboard of Australia (including in Lane Cove National Park), consecutive weeks of hazardous air pollution from dense bushfire smoke and severe storms. This was closely followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying economic shock, which will be an ongoing source of chronic stress for our community into the foreseeable future.

The Resilience Plan arose from recognition of the interconnectedness between climate change and urbanisation and the impacts from these types of events. We gained further impetus from ongoing participation in the regional planning program Resilient Sydney and in accompanying responses under the Greater Sydney Commission’s North District Plan to plan for our City’s future.

Developed in response to community concerns about current and future issues impacting resilience in our City, the plan sets out actions to help support and equip the community with the tools required to become more resilient and adapt, survive and thrive. It also lays out actions to be taken over a 10-year-period that will build capacity and ensure the Ryde community, local businesses and Council can prepare for local and global events, major shocks and emergencies as well as respond to and recover from similar situations in the future. These include risks and threats from heatwaves, severe storms, floods and bushfires, as well as infrastructure failure, communications meltdowns and further pandemics.

The first part of our plan sets out a vision and identifies pressures, issues, challenges and opportunities for resilience in our City. Nine key response areas have been identified to guide actions that will build and strengthen our preparedness so the community is able to adapt, survive and thrive in the most challenging times.

The second part of the plan provides an implementation strategy, and outlines actions across the key response areas and five main pillars of resilience which are: supporting each other, adapting to climate change, connecting for strength, getting ready and preparing our City.

When adopted (scheduled for September 2020), the City of Ryde will become the first local government area in NSW to adopt a comprehensive local resilience plan.

Council formally adopted the Parramatta River Masterplan, which guides the future development and management of 17 parks and seven road reserves along the Parramatta River foreshore and aims to improve the health of the Parramatta River in order to make it swimmable once again.

Our Natural Areas Plan of Management covers bushland, escarpments, foreshores, watercourses and wetlands and applies to all parks and reserves with natural areas that are not covered by an individual plan of management.

The draft Children’s Play Implementation Plan will ensure that playgrounds in the City of Ryde will have more inclusive elements, shaded areas and safety features, while the Dog Recreation Needs Study 2020 guides planning of both existing and potential future dog off-leash facilities to meet the changing expectations of our growing community.

Council endorsed a City of Ryde Indoor Facilities Review which sets out the need for indoor facilities until 2036, and identified future potential expansion of facilities to meet the demands of a growing population. We also developed our draft Open Space Future Provision Strategy.

The City of Ryde is home to a vibrant and diverse community, with people from more than 100 different countries calling our City home. To protect and revitalise the places, facilities and services that people use and better target these to meeting the changing needs of our community, we consulted extensively with community members and stakeholders to develop our Social Plan and Creativity Strategy 2019-2024 and our Halls and Facilities Strategy 2020-2041. These will help support our commitment to community and social wellbeing, and provide new directions for arts and creativity in our City.

Together, these strategic plans, supported by the ongoing refinement and development of supporting frameworks and strategies are improving not only the liveability and desirability of our City, but also its resilience in the face of extremes.

Putting resilience to the test

Following months of extreme heat, thick smoke and bushfire-associated stress, the City of Ryde was once again put to the test during a series of major storms in February.

While there was widespread damage cause by localised flooding, falling trees and power outages, forward planning and a quick response saved our community from much worse.

Once we received advance notice of two massive storm fronts heading to our City, Council officers swung into action. The community was advised to make storm preparations and prepare for power outages.

To limit damage to infrastructure we targeted known hotspot areas, including arranging street sweeping to reduce the accumulation of surface debris prior to the storm and minimise local flooding. We also serviced stormwater pits that suffer frequent blockages during heavy downpours to reduce the potential for flooding, and engaged the services of a contractor equipped with specialised water pumping equipment, allowing us to respond immediately to reports of flooding.

Extra trucks and additional contractors were put on standby to collect fallen vegetation and clean up the worst-hit areas.

Once the storms hit, we kept our community up-to-date about impacts across the City on our website and social media channels and triaged hundreds of calls for help to ensure resources were directed to areas most in need.

In total, the two storms generated some 500 calls for help with trees ranging in severity from fallen branches to street blockages, trees fallen on power lines and property access issues and many other calls for help with flooding and debris related issues.

By planning ahead, Council was able to swing into action as soon as the danger had passed, coordinate with authorities and clear access to property and infrastructure and reduce the impact of these extreme events on our community.