Planning central Sydney

This chapter will trace the direction and achievements of planning and development control in central Sydney in the postwar period, with a particular emphasis on attempts to plan for and regulate commercial office development. This involves examining the often contentious interplay between the planning powers of state government, which provides the strategic planning framework, and Sydney City Council, one of more than 40 local governments in metropolitan Sydney which has statutory planning responsibilities for local area planning and development control (see Figure 5.1).The city of Sydney has always been a strategically important site where the continual struggle between state and local government for political control of planning and land use regulation is evident. It is also a site that has experienced sustained growth, development and intensification of use unparalleled in the metropolitan area. Assessing the uneven successes and failures of planning to control and guide the direction of central city development reveals how planning aspirations have been most successfully achieved insofar as they have coincided with market demands in property development and with state intentions of securing a competitive niche for Sydney in the emergent hierarchy of global cities