Urban growth strategy in Greater Sydney leads to unintended social and environmental challenges

Cities have advanced in terms of economic and social status over the past five decades, improving the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people. However, population growth and urban expansion have put pressure on social and environmental conditions. This study examines urban policymakers’ perceptions about causal relationships in the urban system as revealed in urban planning reports. Here we analyzed 500 pages from published urban plans of Greater Sydney between 1968 and 2018 and coded the text into causal maps. The findings show that policymakers adopted a dominant urban development strategy over the past 50 years to pursue economic and public infrastructure growth. Over time, this growth strategy resulted in a number of social and environmental challenges that negatively impacted societal well-being. Although policymakers eventually recognized the seriousness of social and environmental challenges, they never attempted to fundamentally change the dominant growth strategy. Instead, policymakers sought to address the challenges (that is, symptoms) by responding to each issue piecemeal. This study codes about 500 pages from three urban development plans for the Greater Sydney area between 1968 and 2018 using causal maps. It found that there were unintended social and environmental consequences from the sustained economic growth strategy in the plans, and although there were attempts to solve them, there were never plans to change the dominant growth strategy.