County of Cumberland planning scheme

The most striking feature of the Plan was a vast green belt to hem in the city's sprawl. Beginning near Pennant Hills, the five-kilometre-wide belt would have curved through Western Sydney, encircling Baulkham Hills, Blacktown, Seven Hills and Liverpool before ending on the banks of the Georges River opposite East Hills. A non-contiguous section would then have covered the western Sutherland Shire, roughly bordered by the Georges River in the north and the Woronora River in the east. Motorists travelling north on the Cumberland Highway would have seen, with a few exceptions around Liverpool and Toongabbie, only green space to their left. The Green Belt augmented an already extensive national parks system around Sydney, stretching from Royal National Park in the south to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in the north. == Roads ==

The Plan reserved corridors for: • a north-eastern road, roughly along the alignment of the Warringah Expressway, crossing Middle Harbour and following Wakehurst Parkway and Pittwater Road to Palm Beach • a northern road, roughly along the alignment of today's Victoria Road, the M2 Hills Motorway and the Pacific Motorway • a western road, roughly along the alignment of today's M4 Motorway • a southern road, roughly along the alignment of the F6 corridor, but passing to the west of Sydney Airport • a south-western road, branching off the southern road near Tempe and roughly following the alignment of today's M5 Motorway • a ring-road, roughly along the alignment of the A3 ring-road between Macquarie Park in the north and Miranda in the south. == History ==

Early investigations underpinning the 1951 Plan were in fact undertaken more than a decade earlier by the Department of Main Roads. The investigations were detailed in a report entitled "Main Road Development Plan for Sydney Metropolis and County of Cumberland - Part 1 Investigations Relating to the Present and Future Extent and Pattern of the Metropolis" (DMR, 1940). The DMR commenced surveys of land use, population densities and traffic flows in 1943. In 1945, it issued a report titled the "County of Cumberland Main Road Development Map". When the Cumberland County Council was formed in 1946, it used some of the data collected by the DMR. The Cumberland County Council plan did not differ greatly from that produced by DMR. The DMR's road planning "required little alteration" ==See also==