Integration surrounding regions

The direction - ‘A well-connected city’, plans to develop an accessible and walkable city by focusing on strengthening its different transport corridors, benefit from the land use around these corridors and attain a well-connected and accessible city. To achieve the goals of the chosen direction, Objectives 14, 15, 16 & 17, help in strengthening the different regional, inter district, and local connections within the city. Each objective comprises streamlined actions and strategies as steps to achieve the objective.

For instance, Objective 14, talks about creating walkable and 30-minute cities by integrated land use and transport planning. Strategies 14.1 & 14.2 support this by prioritising the investigation and planning to protect future transport and infrastructure corridors, and Strategy 14.3 supports and improves the performance of the transport network by including improved innovative approaches for education, institutions and business establishments. Objective 16, identifies the important freight and logistics network as per the document Future Transport 2056, and plans to capitalise on the land use and infrastructure aspect of this corridor. Both the strategies 16.1 & 16.2, plan to manage the interfaces of industrial areas, trade gateways and intermodal facilities and optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of the freight handling and logistics network; and are in line with the objective.

Objective 15 of the plan is to strengthen the connectivity of Eastern, GPOP and Western economic corridors. The GSC acts as a link between the state and the local government, community and business for collaboration to deliver GPOP with a place-based approach. GPOP looks at wider opportunities for improving livability aspects of the place with maximising active transport and its amenities by collaboration with Land and Housing Corporation. The initial actions mentioned as Action 6&7 in the plan are to collaborate and deliver GPOP vision and to develop a growth infrastructure compact for GPOP to strengthen the strategic centre - GPOP of the GSR first. Further, Strategy 15.1,15.2 & 15.3 support the delivery of the economic corridors by prioritising public transport to achieve 30-minute city objective along with co-locating health, education, social and community facilities in strategic centres along the economic corridors, prioritising transport investment to enhance accessibility to economic corridors between centres. Overall, the direction identifies the areas, and is horizontally integrated with the document Future Transport 2056. It identifies city shaping, city serving and centre serving corridors and draws the objective aiming at the different hierarchies of transport network needed in the city. It can be said that the objective relates directly to the direction, and the strategies and actions define the route for development for the local government to follow and are well integrated.

According to the GSRP, the combined population of the greater Sydney, Greater Newcastle and Wollongong would be 10 million by 2056. The direction - “Well connected city”, in the document explains ‘Objective 17 - to enhance the regional connectivity’, to achieve better connections and opportunities for people. A Metropolis of Three Cities caters to the needs of Greater Sydney and the region’s existing and upcoming growth and developmental challenges. The challenge to grow comes with growth pressure due to the unique geography of the region. The topography contains elements like waterways, national parks, ridges and ravines which are a physical constraint and hinder infrastructure developmental activities like construction of roads and rail networks, resulting in lack of accessibility for the area.

Greater Sydney along with its surrounding regions have economical connections based on the supply of goods and services, and business to business interactions. (GSRP) Greater Sydney region experiences a large workforce coming from Central Coast and Newcastle regions, while Wollongong provides tertiary educational opportunities to students. Improving regional transport connectivity not just supports economic development but with the multi-nuclei model of Metropolitan of three cities, connecting economic clusters with strong transport infrastructure developments giving options to people to choose the place to live and work. Sydney CBD being an internationally known economic hub, it's important to enhance regional connectivity to Greater Sydney.