This inquiry report finds that the purchase of the Leppington Triangle land for the Western Sydney Airport project has breached the social contract between the Commonwealth and the public, by not providing any clear value for money and by creating arbitrary differences between landholders with...

This study examines the drivers of peri-urban agricultural land loss in Greater Western Sydney (GWS), one of the fastest growing peri-urban regions in Australia, and on the particular contribution of government planning policy and resultant tensions between state and local government decision making.

This paper analyses the urban divide in Sydney from urban planning perspectives in the framework of critical philosophies by applying a qualitative research method of documents analysis and semi-structured interviews.

This research aims to identify how the eight councils have addressed climate risk and resilience, and to determine the barrier and enablers to planning, implementing, and evaluating related strategies across the Western Sydney region.

Public hearing 13 examined the experiences of a group of people with disability living in disability residential accommodation in western Sydney provided by a non-government disability services provider, Sunnyfield Disability Services.

This study aimed to gain insight into factors influencing cervical screening among women from a area in Western Sydney characterised by disadvantage and ethnic diversity, and which has one of the lowest participation rates in the National Cervical Screening Program.

The report examines the economic trajectory of the Central City District economies of Western Sydney in the boom years prior to the COVID-19 recession.

This report details the findings of an 18-month long scoping study, informed by local advisory group established by ACON, into a range of LGBTQ+ needs and experiences in Greater Western Sydney.

Increasing summer temperatures and urban development in Western Sydney present key challenges for contemporary planning. This research shows that increasing the area of hard surfaces and buildings leads to warming while increasing the area of open spaces and tree canopy leads to cooling.

Based on empirical data collections, this report provides more than twenty practical recommendations on how to reduce the impacts of outdoor heat.

Single older women aged 55 and over are over-represented amongst the asset poor in Australia and are one of the fastest growing groups of homeless people nationally. This report presents the experiences of single older women living on low incomes in the private rental sector...

This report documents variation of summer temperatures across Penrith, in Western Sydney. Between 14 December 2019 and 31 March 2020, more than 1.4 million measurements of air temperatures were collected using 120 data loggers.

This research takes up the challenge of promoting a new approach to thinking about urban liveability in warming cities, with two principles at its core. First, asking how open space can be planned for ‘coolth’ defined as the experience of feeling manageably comfortable in a...

This second of three reports analysing jobs availability in Western Sydney examines the geographical outcomes of high rates of workforce growth and the decline of manufacturing.

This report analyses key shifts in the Western Sydney labour market in the context of rapid population growth. It positions Western Sydney’s labour force growth and change against 21st century shifts in the region’s economic structure.

This report examines what will happen in the Great Western Sydney region over the next twenty years.

This report explores the experiences of LGBTQ people in CALD communities in Greater Western Sydney following the same-sex marriage vote in 2017.

This research shows it is often an experience of poverty, with disability exacerbated by an inability to afford essential medical items or appointments or the need to meet obligations to retain Newstart.

This report examines microclimatic variation across the LGA of Cumberland Council, New South Wales. During the summer of 2018/19, more than 1.4 million individual measurements of air temperature were recorded at 97 locations in and around the LGA. Our data analyses revealed that communities living...

The compounding effects of climate change and rapid urbanisation cause cities to heat up. The City of Parramatta in the central region of the Greater Sydney Basin already experiences extreme summer temperatures and heatwave conditions on an annual basis. This report describes microclimate across the...

Community Colleges Australia has produced this report for the NSW Department of Industry, with the aim to ensure that the NSW government can use the capacity of Western Sydney not-for-profit community education providers to support that region’s economic development priorities.

Industry clusters are seen as critical to economic growth and national competitiveness in the United States. This report examines areas of future high-tech export potential and gives recommendations for how to encourage the emergence of industry clusters focused on aerospace and defence, food and agribusiness...

When is an airport not just an airport? Western Sydneysiders are in the process of finding out.

This report was commissioned by the Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre to understand the basic issues concerning the settlement of migrants and refugees, including examining resettlement supports for migrants and refugees with disability. The report applies the Circles of Social Life approach, which offers an...

Increasing extreme heat will have profound impacts on people, industries and ecosystems in Western Sydney. CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology projections estimate that the average number of days over 35 could increase by up to five times without strong climate policies from a historical average...