PLANNING FOR OUR FUTURE
We stand at the threshold of an exciting future. In the past few years our community has told us the things they love about the City of Ryde and the things that could be done better to make our City more liveable, more desirable and better prepared for the future. With a projected increase in population to over 160,000 residents by 2031, we have an opportunity to use this growth to enhance the City’s prosperity, uniqueness and liveability while planning for the future. During the year we invested significant resources into planning how we can reshape our City and ensure that we undertake targeted initiatives that meet the needs of our growing and changing community. We completed our Local Strategic Planning Statement (LSPS), which came into effect on 31 March. This is a keystone document for the City of Ryde, providing a 20-year blueprint for land-use planning within the City. The LSPS sets out our vision and planning priorities, and brings together the Community Strategic Plan and the local planning framework, with existing relevant Council studies, documents, plans and policies to guide future development. To meet the requirements set out in the Greater Sydney Commission’s Greater Sydney Region Plan – A Metropolis of Three Cities and the North District Plan, we also completed a review of our Local Environmental Plan. As part of this work, we finalised and adopted a Heritage Review that endorsed stronger protection for items and areas of heritage significance across the local community. We developed our draft Local Housing Strategy, which provides key directions for the future housing supply in the City of Ryde, including planning for housing growth that comprises a mix of dwelling sizes, types and price points, allowing the current population to remain in the local area through different stages of life. The strategy also aims to mitigate the impact of State environmental planning policies by removing multi-dwelling housing from current low density residential zones to ensure the City of Ryde does not lose its identity, become overcrowded or create problems for the future. One of the things our community values most about living in the City of Ryde is our range of parks, open spaces and sportsgrounds, which are in constant use all year round. To better understand current and likely future sporting, recreational and leisure needs and guide the way we manage and operate our parks and associated facilities, we finalised a number of key park and open space masterplans as part of our ongoing planning program. For example, the Meadowbank Park and Memorial Park Masterplan will increase sporting capacity within Meadowbank Park while also implementing a range of environmental and active recreation improvements across both parks. The Westminster Park Masterplan will see a synthetic sports field and a new amenities building to better meet the needs of growing numbers of sports groups. The Gannan Park and McCauley Park Masterplan will result in the creation of open spaces that meet the current and future needs of a range of different user groups. The draft ELS Hall Park, Greenwood Park and Booth Reserve Plans of Management will ensure the parks meet current and future sporting, recreational and leisure needs while providing additional environmental protection.
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