How Sydney became one giant construction site

Updated

Welcome to Sydney, Australia's crane capital, and very much under construction.

In January, the New South Wales Government warned Sydneysiders to prepare for a "year of construction", and pleaded for patience while major road and rail projects were built.

But are the detours worth it?

Quantity surveying company Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) this week released its quarterly crane index, which shows of the 685 cranes working on projects Down Under, 350 of them are in Sydney.

Barangaroo has been a hotspot for construction in the past 10 years, with most works, including the city's second casino, due to be completed by early 2021.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the cranes reflected NSW's infrastructure agenda.

"Every single crane in the sky is more evidence of another home, another school, another hospital, another business in our capital," he said.

There are just 151 cranes working on projects in Melbourne, while Sydney's stats also dwarfs Brisbane (85) and the Gold Coast (31).

The numbers reflect a construction boom in Australia's biggest city, with projects like the $17 billion motorway extravaganza WestConnex, NorthConnex, Sydney Metro — which has an estimated price tag of up to $11 billion — and two light rail lines all being built.

And there's more to come with upgrades to several sporting arenas in the pipeline and work to begin on the new western Sydney airport by 2026.

In NSW, construction work grew by 7.5 per cent in the 2016-17 financial year, with residential activity up 12 per cent.

Many of the cranes are distributed throughout Sydney suburbs, unlike other cities which have cranes closer to the city centre.

The Sydney suburbs with the most crane activity include Epping with 16, Parramatta (10) and Wolli Creek (13) — where an apartment building had to be evacuated last month after a nearby crane collapsed into it.

John Cross from quantity surveying company RLB said the index shows a nationwide trend to high-density living.

"The crane index is a very simplified measure of I suppose the current state of the larger construction projects in Australia," Mr Cross said.

"Walking around the suburbs within Australia I think the rise of residential multi-dwelling apartment blocks over the five to ten years has been the norm, obviously land is expensive."

The Wolli Creek incident was not the only mishap in August, with another crane toppling into Sydney Harbour and damaging the famous "face" entry at Luna Park.

There are 17 crane projects in Adelaide, 18 in Canberra, 25 in Perth and just three in Hobart.

The coastal NSW city of Newcastle has five crane projects and there are none in Darwin.

Topics: government-and-politics, federal---state-issues, building-and-construction, sydney-2000

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