Mount Druitt, Rooty Hill, Seven Hills and Blacktown CBD will house the bulk of the 44,000 new homes and 45,000 new jobs required over the next two decades.
Blacktown Council’s draft Local Environmental Plan, released today, has the four town centres zoned as ‘‘Urban Renewal Precincts’’.
The suburbs have been zoned with land for medium and high-density buildings.
They were targeted by the council for higher density development because they ‘‘each have a train (and/or) bus station and a medium to large business centre’’.
Residential towers up to 72 metres tall, or about 24 storeys, can only be built in the Blacktown CBD under the plan.
Seven Hills has been zoned for buildings up to 32 metres high; Mount Druitt is zoned for 40m and Rooty Hill is marked for buildings up to 20m.
The Blacktown Council area was earmarked as a growth region by the state government’s Sydney Metropolitan Strategy in 2010.
The planning document released by the council today, which has been 10 years in the making, is the most detailed plan to date for accommodating the tens of thousands of people destined for the region.
The draft plan brings the council’s planning regulations in line with the state government’s Standard Instrument Local Environmental Plan.
A statement by the council said: ‘‘this will make it easier to interpret, particularly by those in the property and development industry’’.
As well as identifying new housing and industry centres, the plan lays out an environmental strategy and attempts to meet the needs of residents for recreation needs.
Some other features of the new plan include a designated low density residential zone (R2) that replaces the current allowance of medium density housing council-wide.
■Medium density and high density housing will be restricted to the R3 Medium Density Residential and R4 High Density Residential Zones.
■Those medium and high density zones will predominantly apply to land within the Blacktown, Mount Druitt, Seven Hills and Rooty Hill precincts.
■The zoning of approximately 200 hectares of industrial land north of the Blacktown CBD and 35ha of industrial land north of Seven Hills railway station as B7 Business Park.
■The B7 zone is intended to accommodate office and light and high technology industrial uses in a business park environment.
The draft BLEP 2013 can be viewed on the council’s website www.blacktown.nsw.gov.au/blep2013.
Residents and land owners have three months to comment on the new planning controls.