This petition seeks to provide a voice for the residents: principally from Edgecliff, Double Bay and Paddington who live close to New South Head Road but also residents of Vaucluse, Dover Heights, Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill that use New South Head Road to commute or navigate between home and schools and shoppers affected by traffic congestion at Edgecliff; residents who oppose high density, high rise residential developments being built above and around the Edgecliff Commercial Centre and between Double Bay and Rushcutters Bay as currently proposed by the Woollahra Council’s Draft Edgecliff Commercial Centre Strategic Plan (“Plan”); and residents who can foresee unmanageable increases in traffic congestion on New South Head Road and inadequate provision for parking.

We would like to see independent studies of medium density architectural alternatives to residential tower blocks to be incorporated into local council planning policy for areas such as Edgecliff where the height and scale of buildings should conform to the desired future character of the area. 

We believe WMC should be entitled to set height and density limits in their planning policies that respond to but do not exceed NSW state  government new housing targets and are moderated by the availability of funding for new transport and community infrastructure to meet increased demand.

We think that WMC’s planning policies should require proposals to purposefully embrace specific design principles. Principles that include the need to respond sympathetically to the adjacent residential heritage conservation areas, to be of human relatable rather than monolithic scale and to integrate with the existing built and land forms.

We also demand that WMC be entitled to incorporate protections into the Strategic Plan against overshadowing of public and private outdoor space (no less than 3 hours between 9am and 3 pm), against incompatible bulk and scale or inconsistency with desired future character.