What Penrith in New South Wales is doing

 

From ‘Sourceable’

The Changing Face of Penrith.

Penrith’s sleepy country town feel is changing fast. A hands-on Council and several exciting developments are transforming its character, breaking old stereotypes and looking to a new future.

Walking down High Street, locals stop to chat with each other and people are comfortable window shopping, spending time in the arcades or watching the footy in the local pub. This is Penrith.

What’s new in the area is the growing number of innovative projects and fresh spaces within the city centre. Penrith is now home to pop-up parks, mobile playvans and even a European-style water canal.

It’s enough to challenge other hip initiatives happening elsewhere in Sydney, but like many other places, Penrith’s vibrancy differs greatly depending on what side of the tracks you find yourself.

The southern side of the train station and traditional city heart has long been a centre of activity, while the northern side has traditionally been associated with farming, recreational and defence land. This too is changing, however, with several new developments to the north bringing people and rejuvenating place.

One such development is Thornton, a new suburb directly north of the Penrith train station that includes approximately 1000 dwellings, commercial and retail uses, two hectares of industrial land and seven hectares of open space. The diversity of land uses provided in the masterplan and its focus on walkable human scale promise to improve experiences on the ground and permeability into the Penrith CBD.

– See more at: http://sourceable.net/changing-face-penrith/#sthash.FhPX68q3.PSANSn54.dpuf

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What is happening in Penrith seems similar to what is happening in our own Wynyard Quarter. That said I hope the Penrith project is not eye watering expensive thus attracting flak as its Wynyard Quarter cousin currently is.

Next time I go over to Sydney (next year hopefully) I might go check out Penrith and see how it going.