The new city bears a colonial name and there are questions about locating it in the hottest part of Sydney, but we are also seeing all 3 tiers of government work together in an innovative way.
Very hot days in Western Sydney are typically 5 degrees hotter than parts of the city close to the coast and are becoming more common, but only in the west. Four climate drivers explain the difference.
Voters in the region have long been seen as caring more about their finances than green issues. But living through extreme heat, rain and floods has them focused on living with climate change.
Tracey Lien’s debut novel investigates a murder of a model student in a Cabramatta restaurant. Anh Nguyen Austen says it brilliantly conveys the complexities of the Vietnamese refugee experience.
Growing fresh produce on the outskirts of a city reduces food miles and increases food security. But the foodbowls next to our our big cities are fast losing their land to urban growth.
These two new romances starring bold, culturally connected heroines from Redfern and Western Sydney break the genre mould – but remain faithful to what readers love about romance.
The rain isn’t letting up for Australia’s east. Remarkably, the low-pressure band that drenched Brisbane is now spawning not one but two east coast lows for Sydney – more typically seen in winter.
Paramatta Road: Omar Sakr’s debut novel gives voice to Arab-Australian Western Sydney.
Raph07/Flickr
The lives of queer Arab-Australian boys and men are vividly inhabited in award-winning poet Omar Sakr’s darkly comic debut novel, set in Western Sydney.
Such a dramatic rise in extreme heat days is not inevitable. If global warming is limited to 1.5℃ this century, Western Sydney will have fewer than 17 days of 35℃ per year.
Here Out West aims to shift the perception about what it means to tell contemporary Australian tales to a broad audience while staying true to the suburbs and communities of Western Sydney.
In order to support people effectively, craft appropriate messages and predict virus spread, it is crucial to use the languages and local networks that bind multicultural communities together.
Public health information for migrant communities needs to cover off the basics but it also needs to provide nuanced messaging to counter myths and misinformation about COVID-19.
It was once thought the Aboriginal names for the Hawkesbury had been lost forever. But after a remarkable find in the Mitchell Library, almost 100 place names will be restored to Dyarubbin Country.
With COVID-19 spreading in Sydney’s southwest, can New South Wales avoid a return to lockdown and a similar scenario to Victoria’s second wave? The answer depends on whether there is community spread.
A new airport, aerotropolis and development of two of the ‘three cities’ in the metropolitan strategy all aim to create jobs in Western Sydney. But right now the only certainty is a huge jobs deficit.
Centrelink queues shocked Australians but long before COVID-19 Western Sydney had job-poor neighbourhoods with very high unemployment rates.
Loren Elliott/AAP
Western Sydney’s growth-driven boom had ended before COVID-19 hit. Some neighbourhood unemployment rates were 2-3 times the metropolitan average, with female workforce participation as low as 43%.
Up early and home late: that’s the daily routine for hundreds of thousands of commuters out of Western Sydney.
Dean Lewins/AAP
Education fuelled extraordinary growth in Western Sydney’s professional services workforce, but their jobs aren’t local. More than 300,000 commute to work outside the region.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne