A Post COVID-19 View of the Future of Sydney

'River Rail', and the development of the economic and residential corridor it enables, will be more important for Greater Sydney in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is clear from the international trends being observed in cities across the globe that the ways cities operate, the journeys that people will make, the relationship between work and home, and the interrelationship between CBDs/city centres and suburbs are changing. Much of this may be temporary until the population is vaccinated and we return to 'normal', but certain trends are being viewed as longer term and are likely to stick. These include the reinvention of CBDs and suburban centres to become more mixed-use in different ways – for example, more jobs in suburban centres, closer to where people live, and more residential in CBDs – and the more hybrid working life enabled by working from home, so that part of the working week will be spent at home and part in the office.

Overall, the consensus is that the radial commuting journeys from distant suburbs to CBDs will decline, but there will be an increase in demand to access more decentralised job centres closer to home. Local town centres across Sydney will change to be less retail-focused in a shift towards having more jobs. We shall also see a related phenomenon of stations, and networks of stations, away from the CBD but accessible to local communities, becoming foci of mixed-use development including many more jobs. This ‘hub and spoke’ model amounts to cities being less focused on the single centre of employment for many kinds of jobs (the Sydney CBD hub for example) to a more decentered job market at nodes accessible by efficient and safe mass transit.

Focus should now be on coordinated planning, sustainable growth and investment including the 'River Rail'. 'River Rail' fits well into this scenario and helps deliver the more balanced city; the more decentred city of short journeys between home and work. It fits the emerging model of the '30-minute city', combined with the city of 15-minute and, indeed, 5-minute journeys, where one might walk, cycle or use micro mobility to get from home to one of the stations/ mixed-use centres along the route of 'River Rail' - for which there is now an international appetite.

This more decentred hub and spoke model is likely to benefit Parramatta, as an alternative jobs centre, and the stations and centres connected to it. Indeed, Parramatta and the ‘'River Rail' Corridor’ will need to ‘step up’ faster and further in order to attract workers in this new era: public policy will need to ensure that the mass transit network enables this shift away from long radial journeys to the Sydney CBD. Our proposal fits well with the emerging preferences of employees and enterprises in this new era and with the need to enhance the job potential of centres apart from the CBD of Sydney, while ensuring that the employment journeys that are required between the suburbs and the Sydney CBD remain efficient and speedy. We believe without such a proposal, the potential for Greater Sydney to be a successful ‘post-COVID City’, with its more dispersed economy, is hindered. In the wake of COVID-19, it seems to us that this proposal is no longer in the ‘nice to have’ category, but the ‘must have’.

Image: Hurstville Train Station during COVID in 2020