Landscape first! Nature-driven design for Sydney’s third city

Urbanization around the world has taken a flight towards rapid, sometimes uncontrolled growth. Megacities expanded, whilst erasing the developable area and adjusting the existing landscape to artificial water and nature systems. This rampant expansion often leads to monotonous new neighborhoods, often dominated by high rise, or extensive urban sprawl. The financial benefits often dominate the quality of the development. These widespread practices of urban development are hard to modify, to the detriment of sustainability. In this chapter the state of the art of urban development in Sydney and its associated problems are described first. An alternative approach, to take the landscape as the starting point of urbanization is then proposed, before conclusions are drawn.