How much open space is in our Shire?

"4.8% of our Shire is pathetic we must have more, The state government standard for open space in the Sydney metro area is 2.83 hectares of open space per 1,000 people. We now have only 2 hectares****. That's about 28% less than we should have"...... this is what I am told from some of our residents,

No one would say "we don't need more", however, let's consider a few facts,.........

1. 10% is zoned and used for urban development....(residential 9.4%, business 0.3% and industrial 0.3%)..

2. 9.4% is residential.........

3. 4.8% is open space............

What does this mean?

the area of open space in proportion to residential is just better than half of the residential development...... and thats fact.

Now, open space is needed mainly for residential areas, as most properties in rural areas, approx 14.6% of our Shire, have enough room and then some for kicking a ball, playing cricket or horse riding, plus the fact that the population per 1000 Hectares is very low, the rural area has very little effect on the above figures.

But, what about % of population verses open space??... what about the rest of the shire??

Hornsby shire is 510 sq kilometres

4.8% of 510 = 24. 48 sq Kilometres

24 .48   x  100 hectares per sq Km = 2448  Hectares?..................... is this correct???

150 000 people in this Shire?? ...............................................2448 / 150 = 16.32 hectares per 1000 people****

And if you take the figure of 462.4 sq kilometres as the area of the shire, it still works out to 14.8 Hectares to 1000 people

We can increase the No of people 5 times before we get to a figure of 2.83 Hectares of open space per 1000 people,............... and,.. these figures do include the rural population

there is approx. 38569 separate houses (77.6%) , 3369 semi detached, row or terrace houses and townhouses (6.8%) , 7054 flats, units or apartments (14.2%) and 288 other dwellings (0.6%) as at a few years ago .

Apart from industrial,commercial, retail, special uses, environmentaly Protected, unzoned (waterway) areas, the remainder is National Park or Nature Reserve....very little population in these areas that would would require open space, and as you can see from the above charts, National Parks have had "open space" transferred to them..

At pressent, our open space includes approximately 174 parks, 134 playgrounds, 12 garden parks and 55 separate playing fields.

Bottom line? ............... **** The amount of open space in proportion to urban (populated) areas is in fact quite large