A BOLD plan to create an innovation corridor throughout Western Sydney could generate up to 80,000 jobs over the next decade and see the region become the nation’s own Silicon Valley.
The independent economic development strategy, which has the backing of three tiers of government and the business community, proposes the creation of innovation hubs — suburbs that specialise in different industries.
The blueprint, developed by the University of Western Sydney, plans for medical, science, technology, aviation and agribusiness hubs, each dotted along the outer Sydney orbital corridor and centred around the long-awaited Badgery's Creek airport.
The widely backed plan also includes a proposal to build a $20 million Western Sydney Science Centre, similar to the renowned Questacon science and technology facility in Canberra, to be built at the UWS’s Penrith campus.
Western Sydney Innovation Arc
At the core of the UWS strategy are key hubs.
It proposes a large health and medical research hub be created in Macarthur, connected directly to the new population within the South-West Growth Centre (Oran Park, Leppington, Austral).
In conjunction with a private sector plan to build a Sydney Science Park, a centre of science, development and research would be created around Luddenham. This hub would focus on becoming a leading international centre for research and development in food, energy and health.
Further north, the blueprint proposes a hi-tech business hub at Werrington Park “that focuses on activating and growing technology and innovation-orientated businesses’’.
It has already been dubbed Sydney IQ and has the backing of Federal Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
“By creating a whole innovation corridor, there will be more jobs, opportunities and people living here,’’ Ms Bishop told The Daily Telegraph. “This part of Western Sydney then becomes a hub for a smart economy … this is how Silicon Valley started.’’
At the core of the arc is Badgerys Creek airport which, according to the blueprint must be surrounded by an aerotropolis business hub.
