Skip to main content

The Dictionary of Sydney
Multimedia
Plan of the streets of the town of Sydney, 13 A...

Plan of the streets of the town of Sydney, 13 April 1832

By

Thomas Livingstone Mitchell

Contributed By

State Archives & Records New South Wales

[CGS 13859, [Map 5470]]

Search

Browse

Browse
- Artefacts
- Buildings
- Events
- Natural Features
- Organisations
- People
- Places
- Structures
- Entries
- Multimedia
- Subjects
- Roles
- Contributors

Connections

Appears in

Built environment Planning Roads

Subjects

Maps Roads

Buildings

Fort Macquarie

Natural features

Sydney Cove

Places

Darling Harbour Surry Hills The Rocks

Footer

Home
About
Copyright
Contact

Footer Secondary

Contribute
Donate

Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone

State Archives & Records New South Wales

Statutory body established by the State Records Act 1998. The Act provides for the creation, management and protection of the records of public offices of the State and for public access to those records.

Based at Kingswood, State Archives and Records NSW manage and provide access to the New South Wales State archives collection, a unique and irreplaceable part of Australia's cultural heritage dating back to 1788.

Built environment

Built over tracks, campsites, rock art and middens used for thousands of years before the dispossession of the Aboriginal people, Sydney's early haphazard development was given form by public buildings. As public transport developed, suburbs spread, and throughout the twentieth century, town planners struggled with developers to direct the form and extent of the city. After World War II, city buildings got taller, outer suburbs sprang up ever further away, and issues of heritage and architecture were contested. In the twenty-first century, concerns about environment, urban density, public transport and renewed infrastructure are driving change.

Planning

From an accidental city without a plan, Sydney has become a city with many plans. The early town grew without controls, but later governments tried to regulate building and development, and keep up with necessary services and infrastructure. From 1900, resumptions, zoning and regulation were used to shape the city and its suburbs.

Roads

Starting as a tiny settlement on the edge of a great continent, Sydney developed roads as Europeans moved out into the hinterland. They became gateways to the port and city that Sydney Town grew into.

Roads

Maps

Fort Macquarie

full record »

Square castellated fort built on Bennelong Point, incorporating some of the guns taken from HMS Supply.

Sydney Cove

full record »

Small bay on the southern shore of Port Jackson, which became the site for the European settlement in Sydney.

Darling Harbour

full record »

Waterway to the west of the city once surrounded by wharves, goods yards, woolstores and factories which contributed enormously to the city's economic wealth. The former rail lines and goods yards were transformed from commercial port to a recreational and pedestrian precinct in the 1980s.

Surry Hills

full record »

Inner-city suburb located immediately to the south east of the central business district. After explosive growth in the second half of the nineteenth century it came to be seen as a slum, then experienced gentrification from the late 1960s.

The Rocks

full record »

Suburb located north of the central business district on the western shore of Sydney Cove. Characterised by a precinct of restored nineteenth-century buildings which are a major tourist attraction, it was recognised as a separate suburb in 1993.