The Revival of Parramatta Road Is Not About Transport — It’s About Placemaking

The Revival of Parramatta Road Is Not About Transport — It’s About Placemaking is an opinion piece by Tom Oliver Payne, the Place Strategy Director at Hoyne.

Once, Sydney had trams. Lots of them. They skated across the city, tying neighbourhoods to each other and people to place. But in 1955, the great unwinding began. Tracks were torn up, wires came down, and the logic of the car took hold. That was 70 years ago. 

It lingers now as a kind of urban purgatory: too fast to linger, too lifeless to arrive. A corridor defined by motion, yet devoid of momentum. 

Once, this road shimmered. Parramatta Road, Sydney’s earliest artery, carved its way from saltwater to stone. For tens of thousands of years it was a path of exchange, a place of gathering. Today, it’s no more than a wound. Six-lanes congealed with traffic and dust. 

And I know about the dust. I grew up in the inner west. Every morning before school, my brother and I would wait for the second of two buses along this civic scar. We’d sit on the concrete steps of a karaoke shop that never opened, watching the heavy air settle between idling cars and shuttered shops. Even then, I could see it wasn’t made for people. And yet, the bus never moved fast enough to escape it. 

Urbanists now call it a ‘stroad’: neither street nor road, but a Frankensteinian hybrid that fails on both fronts. And yet, buried beneath the noise and neglect, Parramatta Road remains our civic spine. Not just spatially, but symbolically. From the 1912 vision of a grand boulevard above a tunnel, to Jack Lang’s 1920 lament, to WestConnex’s undelivered promise of renewal, this corridor has hosted more visions than it has trees. What it lacks is follow-through. 

This is not a transport problem. It’s a placemaking challenge. 

Yes, light rail is needed, but not as a panacea. As provocation. As a reason to rediscover what lies between the CBD and the near-west. Done well, it could stitch together Tech Central, Camperdown, Ashfield, Burwood, Homebush, and everything in between. A necklace of public space, mid-rise housing, shopfront culture, and civic life. 

It’s not one place. It’s many. A constellation of destinations that together tell a truer story of Sydney. Not east or west, but both. Not future or past, but both. 

This is what real placemaking looks like: active ground planes, street trees, laneway plazas. Music venues and medical precincts. Apartments that overlook bakeries that open early and bars that close late. A civic boulevard grounded in reality, not rhetoric. 

And it’s possible. Mecone’s analysis shows up to 45,000 new homes could be unlocked with the right transport and planning reform. The housing crisis is not a reason to rush. It’s the reason to get this right. We don’t need more sprawl. We need more soul. 

Governance is key. But so is intent. This corridor needs leadership that understands cities are not built with policies, but with priorities. And placemaking must be one of them. 

George Street proved it can be done. What was once a traffic sewer is now a pedestrian spine; slow, elegant, legible. Civic pride replaced cynicism. Parramatta Road deserves no less. 

I often think of the old car yards. Rick Damelian’s, in particular — his smiling face framed by flags and fibreglass lions. Now, it’s just silence and bitumen. But perhaps that’s the point. If a car yard can vanish, maybe a high street can return. 

So picture this: a two-track light rail. A continuous, tree-lined boulevard from Broadway to Burwood. Cycle lanes that don’t die in the gutter. Shops that trade. Apartments with balconies. Shade, rhythm, and life at the edge. 

Cars still pass, but slower. Quieter. Fewer. 

This is not just a corridor. It’s a reckoning. Can Sydney stop pretending this doesn’t matter? 

Because Parramatta Road shouldn’t just take us somewhere. 

It should be somewhere.