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Western Sydney is dead. Long live Sydney

Andy Marks Commentator October 14, 2025 — 7.30pm

Western Sydney is dead. Long live Sydney. The quest to map Sydney’s subregions is obscured by stereotypes. Take it from me, it’s not helping.

Carving up Australia’s largest metropolis entrenches economic, social and cultural prejudices. These labels are unrecognisable to the people they tag, and they are inaccurate.

As someone who scraped his knees growing up on the mean streets of Toongabbie, it’s time to set the record straight.

I don’t recall, as a kid, the words western Sydney being uttered around the kitchen table. In state government corridors, the 1968 Sydney Region Outline Plan reigned.

For cartographers, the closest nomenclature was “the west

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