Urban planning of Sydney

[3] However, no architects, town planners, or surveyors came with the First Fleet, with engineers Augustus Alt and William Dawes left to the task of following Phillip's intentions, and consequently drew up a plan for a grid pattern with a town centre on the western hills above where the Tank Stream ran into the Sydney Cove.

[3] Instead, the early road network was at least in part based on Indigenous walking paths, which themselves followed natural contours such as ridgelines or the Tank Stream.

[3] Governor Lachlan Macquarie and the New South Wales Government Architect, Francis Greenway, made major contributions to the planning and design of early colonial Sydney.

[6] Greenway had also proposed making a complete plan for the town, with a grand square, major public buildings, as well as a bridge across the harbour at Dawes Point.

[7] Despite such early planning, many of the houses in the convict settlement were built erratically, with an 1832 Report on the Limits of Sydney by Surveyor General Thomas Mitchell noting that peripheral land of the settlement had "been alienated and that roads and boundary lines were oblique and irregular", which he tried in vain to regularize.

[10] The commission recommended building underground railways in the city centre and electrifying the suburban lines.

[8] The husband-wife team of Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin, who had planned Canberra with influence from both movements,[12] also designed the suburb of Castlecrag.

[8] However, in 1945 the City of Sydney was expanded to include eight surrounding suburbs, while a new regional level of government was established with the Cumberland County Council.

[8] This allowed for the creation of the 1948 County of Cumberland planning scheme, which has been called "the most definitive expression of a public policy on the form and content of an Australian metropolitan area ever attempted".

The Greater Western Sydney area became home to families resettled from the inner-city slums to new suburbs, as well as lower income migrants.

[18] Meanwhile, the central business district spread upwards, with the historic 45.7 metre height limit having been lifted in 1957, followed by the construction of the first skyscraper, the AMP Building, in 1962.

According to population forecasts, it is anticipated that revitalisation in these areas will enable capacity for new housing, aligned with sufficient infrastructure to help supply an additional 725,000 homes needed to meet demand.