What's wrong with Sydney?

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SADSDASD

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Whats wrong:

Sydney trains - constant delays, track work, underpaid workers, overworked workers and shitty service.

Weather - too hot. I know, hot weather’s everywhere, but heat waves are more frequent and common nowadays so it’s a health risk.

Homelessness - there are, unfortunately, very many of them, they’re there every-time I go out and most charity services don’t have enough funds to help them stop being homeless and other money provision services can end up being abused or require a permanent address.

Birds - They shit everywhere, they’re loud (just go to Strathfield plaza at night, you’ll understand), they smell (if you’ve ever walked under a tree with an ibis nest in it you’ll understand how much they smell) and they steal your food (fucking seagulls). I know this applies to many other tourist locations, but I can only speak from experience.

Property prices - Its just not affordable unless you take out a loan that would take you years to repay or just sell off all of your organs in which case you’ll have the money but well, you’ll be dead.

Cost of living - Its expensive to live here. Compare the cost of living in Melbourne vs Sydney

Catcalling - Honestly it’s less than in America, but it still exists. Pretty uncomfortable for random people to just call out to you.

Spiders - The Sydney funnel web :D. Never seen one though.

Whats right:

Sydney water - Thank goodness for Sydney water, taken for granted by a lot of people but I really appreciate their service.

Diversity - there are a lot of people from different ethnicities here. Which means a lot of food from different cultures (if you search hard enough). Although there are some people who are racist, most of the residents are chill.

Beaches - they’re great, just go visit one. Bring sunscreen and for fucks sake swim between the fucking flags.

Property prices - In some post codes, the property prices are actually declining so cheers to that, maybe Ill only have to sell half of my organs to have my own property without taking out a loan soon.

dora

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Arrogance.

Unfortunately it seems that many of those in charge in this city thinks that having a postcard harbour is enough to bring tourists and money and that no further effort is required to make Sydney great for everybody to live in, to work in and to visit.

With this outlook, Sydney is essentially run like a casino, grabbing quick cash at every opportunity. Instead of investing effective, future-proof infrastructure or in arts and culture, we get gambling advertisements projected onto the Sydney Opera House and free reign for reckless development…

I’ll try and break it down into different sections-

Infrastructure/Overdevelopment

Solid public transport is the backbone of any city. Sure it is initially expensive, but considering the vital role it plays in keeping a city running every single day, it pays for itself very quickly. Sydney is admittedly a challenging city for public transport planning due to the sheer size of its sprawl (this also comes back to poor planning, however), but it is also one of the world’s richest cities and there is just no excuse for the current state of affairs wherein Sydney Trains has a major network shutdown on a weekly basis and buses can be expected to run 15 minutes late on a good day. Without actually going into detail on the state of our road network, it’s clear also that making public transport actually usable for the bulk of the population would vastly improve traffic on the major links to the city.

To add to the strain on our neglected public transport system, extreme overdevelopment in existing suburbs is taking place (eg. rapid growth of high-rise flats in western suburbs like Homebush, Blacktown and Liverpool) and new suburbs are springing up in previously semi-rural areas at an alarming rate (Jordan Springs, Oran Park, Marsden Park are just a few examples) with very little thought into how these are going to fare in the long term without vital infrastructure. The plan seems to be to just bring more and more people and development (short-term money) into the city without any foresight about what’s actually needed to support the growing population.

Culture

It’s hard to know where to begin with culture in Sydney. We have the potential to be an example to the rest of the world in this area with our diverse and creative population. Instead the state government seems to be doing its very best to stifle any organic creativity and indeed anything outside of gambling, shopping, sports and fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

The lock out laws, whether you believe they are necessary or not, have decimated Sydney’s nightlife, causing most of the smaller music venues and night clubs in and around the CBD to close. Informal, unregulated parties and events have sprung up in their place with police resources regularly used to shut them down. The Star Casino is notably exempted from these lock out laws, which says a lot about the priorities of the state government and who is pulling the strings. There have also been several comments form ministers along the lines of “but why would anyone want to stay out after 1am anyway?” which highlights just how out of touch our politicians are with the live music scene. If you want to see the nightmarish ideal that our politicians have for a good night out in Sydney just have a look at this disaster of an advertising campaign - A new ad for Sydney has been slammed as being so ‘abysmally lame’ it makes Dubbo look like more fun

Adding to the pressure on the struggling music scene, there have also been many cases of established, well-known venues being shut down due to repeated noise complaints from neighbours, most of whom are recent arrivals to ‘trendy’ suburbs of the inner west who move there for the culture but also bring middle class expectations of suburban peace and quiet. There appears to be no protection for venues in this area and Sydney music arts and culture is suffering as a result.

The SCG Trust also probably deserves a dishonourable mention here, comprised of the likes of Alan Jones, Maurice Newman and Barry O’Farrell, among others, the trust basically represents the big end of town in sports (and the associated gambling), the only sort of ‘culture’ that seems to be supported in Sydney. It has been essential in getting the state government to throw $729 million of taxpayer funds to knock down and rebuild a 30 year old stadium (see more here Everything wrong with Sydney in one ‘disgusting’ pic). No matter which way you look at it, it’s a huge sum of money that could have been well spent on the gaping holes in Sydney’s infrastructure aforementioned or even set aside to support Sydney’s arts and culture.

Class Divide

For a nation which frequently markets itself as being egalitarian, Australia’s largest city suffers from staggering wealth inequality. The divide manifests in geographical terms with most of the ‘haves’ populating the eastern and northern suburbs and the ‘have-nots’ in the sprawling west. This has many consequences for life in Sydney, services to the west tend to be less reliable and there is a stigma attached to postcodes in the poorer half of the city, a slur (westie) has even emerged out of the divide.
 
There is real a perception of the ‘big end of town’, the established wealthy, having control of many of the decisions made in Sydney (eg. redeveloping Allianz stadium, the Barangaroo development, making sure The Star was exempt from the lockout laws, promoting gambling on Sydney’s most iconic building, proposed redevelopment of Waterloo, WestConnex, the list goes on). This also means that over-development in the Western suburbs goes on unscrutinised as the voices of existing residents are treated with less respect than the developers who tend to be closely aligned with the state government.

The gambling industry is another important component reinforcing the divide, a vast number of working class Sydneysiders are addicted to the pokies (slot machines for American readers) and sports and other gambling, the proceeds of which line the pockets of huge companies like Al&H (Woolworths) and wealthy individuals like Tom Waterhouse. Until we address this wealth gap, we can never be united, we will always be a city of two halves.

I love this city and I see it as a place bursting with potential, which is why I am so frustrated to see all of the above holding Sydney back. We have so much more to offer the world.

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