"If we're subjecting people to long commutes, we've failed."
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That's the verdict from Geoff Roberts, the Chief Commissioner of the Greater Cities Commission, who has been tasked by the NSW Premier with coming up with a plan to knit together the cities of the Illawarra Shoalhaven, Newcastle and the Hunter, the Central Coast and the three cities of Sydney.
While the announcement of the Six Cities vision, expanding the central, river and parkland cities of Sydney to include their metropolitan neighbours, has focused on the fast rail that will connect the nodes, Mr Roberts says the task is as much a local one, as it is a regional one.
"It's our job to create more jobs for more people closer to where they live," he said.
Mr Roberts's comments came on the sidelines of a lunch held by the Illawarra chapter of the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA).
In speaking with the business community and First Nations leaders before that, Mr Roberts said he is looking to realise the advantages of the Illawarra "at scale", rather than turn the region into a dormitory town for Sydney.
"You're already famous for things like specialised steel, you're already famous for metallurgy. You're already famous for a number of circular economy businesses, I suspect that that's where your elixir for the future is going to emerge."
Mr Roberts was also in Wollongong to drum up interest ahead of the release of a discussion paper, which will set the tone for debate about the region's future and the appointment of a local City Commissioner, both of which are expected shortly.
The move will be the next step in a process that kicked off in December 2021, when the remit of the Greater Sydney Commission was expanded to cover the Illawarra Shoalhaven, Newcastle and the Hunter and the Central Coast.
In the months since, Cities and Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes has outlined his vision for the six cities to rival the most dynamic city regions around the globe, such as the Pearl River Delta, in China and the Randstad in the Netherlands.
Mr Roberts said he expects the Sandstone City Region, as the six cities have been called, to be in the top ten of city regions in the globe.
To do this, planners will leverage each region's strengths, including three deep water ports, six top 200 universities and enterprise and innovation clusters. Mr Roberts said the sum result would be greater than its individual parts.
"It's not just adding three cities onto an existing three city process," he said. "The opportunities are tenfold, not doubled."
No doubt there are many opportunities, but the task doesn't come without its challenges.
A key one will be affordability, and housing was one where Mr Roberts said there would be tough questions.
"In a sense, successful cities always have housing affordability problems, it's a byproduct of success, what we need to do is to learn from the other cities regions in the world that we compare ourselves against for ideas about how we're going to solve that."
Success in this field will not be just about building more dwellings in unending suburbia, but about creating quality jobs closer to where people live.
Acknowledging that hybrid working would remain in many industries would open the path to decentralisation across the region, this would enable high paying and high skilled jobs to be accessible across the city region, Mr Roberts said.
"The idea is that people perhaps have hub offices a couple of days a week, and travel further distances a few days a week in order to get to their HQ we think is the new norm."
"If you take tech Central, in Eastern Sydney, I imagine having a tech central type organisation in each of the six cities, that's what we'd love to be able to do."
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