TRENDS AND DRIVERS

Planning for the future of Sydney must take into account:

• population growth and demographic change, including migration trends, birth rates, and ageing population and less people living in each household;
• employment growth and change, including more service and office based jobs and a shift to integrated office, production and warehousing operations which means more land is required for some economic activities;
• the increasing globalisation of the economy, which means Sydney and Australia have to compete internationally to attract investment and sell goods and services overseas to remain prosperous;
• the push for more sustainable development, in the face of global environmental and climatic changes, which creates drier and more unpredictable weather events, and increased rates of consumption of natural resources such as water and fuels for energy;
• the rising costs of transport-fuel prices, congestion, greenhouse gas emission, air quality and community physical and mental health - are placing in! creasing burdens on families and business. Demand for travel is increasing faster than population growth and the largest increase is in the use of private vehicles; and
• the basic structure and built fabric of the city which is substantially in place, and will not change fundamentally-even over the life of this Strategy.

Each of these trends and drivers, and the challenges they present for planning in Sydney, are considered in more detail in the following sections.