Parramatta needs room for jobs as well as homes

August 3, 2026 — 5:00am

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While sitting in Parramatta Square listening to local students perform at lunchtime, or enjoying the midwinter festival after work, one could be forgiven for forgetting the birth of the city’s second CBD was long and painful.

Yet by 2022 the long-promised office towers had arrived, bringing to fruition a vision that was decades in the making.

Now Parramatta faces a new tussle: despite being one of Sydney’s best-performing councils in approving new housing, the Housing Delivery Authority is green-lighting more homes. This puts it at odds with the council, which wants to ensure its commercial district also flourishes and grows.

Parramatta is not a NIMBY council pushing new........

© The Sydney Morning Herald