Beyond the Warehouse: Why NSW's Next Industrial Landscapes Need to Work Harder
NSW needs more industrial and employment land. But if the answer is simply more warehouses, more roads and more car parks, we are missing one of the biggest landscape-planning opportunities of the next 20 years.
Industrial land isn't glamorous.
It doesn't get the same attention as new town centres, waterfront parks or residential masterplans. But industrial and employment lands are some of the most economically important landscapes in NSW.
They accommodate manufacturing, logistics, construction supply, trades, research, utilities, distribution and thousands of jobs.
And right now, NSW is actively trying to increase the supply of them.
The NSW Government released its Industrial Lands Action Plan in 2025, acknowledging pressure from rising industrial land values, rents and, in some locations, extremely low vacancy. The Government has since established the Employment Land Development Program to actively manage the supply of development-ready employment land and coordinate infrastructure investment.
The need is real.
But there is a bigger question:
What should the next generation of industrial land actually look like?
Because if we simply keep repeating the traditional industrial estate model — warehouse, hardstand, road, car park, fence — we could be locking Western Sydney and other growth areas into decades of car dependency and environmentally poor urban form.
The opportunity is to build something better.
NSW has a lot of industrial land. The problem is getting it ready.
The latest NSW Employment Lands Development Monitor gives an interesting picture.
As of January 2025, Greater Sydney had approximately 20,210 hectares of zoned employment land, including 7,166 hectares that was undeveloped.
That sounds like an enormous amount.
But only 385 hectares of undeveloped Greater Sydney employment land had both water/sewer access and a connection to the B-double road network.
Across Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, Hunter and Illawarra-Shoalhaven, there were almost 14,000 hectares of undeveloped employment land — but only around 1,944 hectares with both water/sewer and B-double road connections.
This is the important distinction:
Zoned land isn't necessarily development-ready land.
Unlocking employment land requires infrastructure.
Roads.
Water.
Sewer.
Power.
Freight connections.
Digital infrastructure.
And increasingly, environmental and climate considerations.
The NSW Government is therefore moving towards actively managing a pipeline of development-ready industrial land rather than simply relying on zoning to create supply.
That creates an opportunity to ask a better question at the same time:
If we're going to spend billions making new employment land development-ready, what kind of places should we be making ready?
Western Sydney is the test case
Nowhere is this more important than the Western Sydney Aerotropolis.
The Aerotropolis represents an enormous new employment landscape around Western Sydney International Airport.
It is intended to support advanced manufacturing, logistics, technology, agribusiness, research and other employment uses.
It is also being built in one of Australia's most car-dependent urban regions.
And this is where things get interesting.
The Western Sydney Aerotropolis Precinct Plan explicitly recognises the need for public transport, walking and cycling, with objectives to create interconnected pedestrian and cycling links and integrate active transport with the precinct's Blue-Green Infrastructure Framework.
But look at the numbers.
The Precinct Plan's 2026 target for the Aerotropolis as a whole was approximately:
79% private vehicle18% public transport3% active transport.
By 2036, the Aerotropolis Core target is considerably more ambitious, at 60% private vehicle, 34% public transport and 6% active transport.
That tells us something important.
The challenge isn't simply building a cycleway.
The challenge is overcoming the enormous convenience of the car.
You can't landscape your way out of car dependency
A tree-lined industrial road is still an industrial road.
A painted cycle lane doesn't automatically make cycling attractive.
And a footpath beside a six-lane freight route doesn't necessarily create a pleasant walking environment.
If every useful destination is separated by enormous blocks, every workplace has a huge car park and every lunch option requires driving, people will drive.
That's not a failure of individual behaviour.
It's a consequence of the environment we've designed.
This matters particularly in Western Sydney, where the car has become deeply embedded in everyday life.
The Aerotropolis therefore presents a fascinating test:
Can we create an employment city where the car remains useful without making it the only practical way to experience the place?
That requires thinking about landscape at a much larger scale.
What if industrial landscape became infrastructure?
The traditional approach is to treat landscape as something that happens around the building.
The warehouse is designed.
The road is designed.
The car park is designed.
The drainage is engineered.
Then landscape architecture arrives at the end and works out where to put trees.
That model is outdated.
In a new generation of employment precincts, landscape can perform several jobs simultaneously.
A drainage corridor can also be a biodiversity corridor.
A pedestrian route can also be a shaded green corridor.
A stormwater basin can also be a wetland.
A road reserve can also provide habitat and active transport.
A development setback can become part of a continuous green network.
A cluster of trees can become both an urban heat mitigation strategy and a place for workers to spend their lunch break.
This is the idea behind blue-green infrastructure: water, ecology, landscape, movement and public life are not necessarily separate systems.
They can reinforce each other.
The Western Sydney Aerotropolis planning framework already recognises this relationship by integrating active transport with its Blue-Green Infrastructure Framework.
The opportunity now is to make it real at the development scale.
The green grid shouldn't stop at the warehouse boundary
Imagine an industrial precinct where every individual development contributes to a larger landscape network.
Instead of:
lot → fence → road → lot → fence → road
we could have:
warehouse → landscape corridor → walking route → habitat → stormwater → public space → next development.
Individually, these interventions might seem modest.
Collectively, they could create an entirely different industrial landscape.
This is particularly important in Western Sydney because new development is occurring across landscapes with existing waterways, ecological systems, agricultural land and remnant vegetation.
The landscape isn't empty just because it hasn't been urbanised.
That principle should influence how employment land is planned from the beginning.
The Illawarra has an even harder question to answer
Western Sydney isn't the only place where this issue is emerging.
The Illawarra-Shoalhaven is also planning for substantial employment and population growth.
The current draft Illawarra-Shoalhaven Plan 2046 anticipates the region growing to more than 677,000 people by 2046, with more than 101,000 additional jobs and significant investment in infrastructure, housing and employment.
The region is also trying to diversify its economy around advanced manufacturing, clean energy, health, education and research.
But this growth doesn't happen on a blank canvas.
The Illawarra-Shoalhaven contains agricultural land, waterways, biodiversity, coastal environments and significant cultural landscapes.
So when another rural area is proposed for employment or industrial development, the question shouldn't simply be:
"Can this land accommodate another industrial estate?"
It should be:
"Is this the best land on which to put it?"
And:
"What are we losing by doing so?"
Maybe the future of industrial land isn't endless greenfield expansion
This is where NSW's current approach becomes particularly interesting.
The Government's Employment Land Development Program isn't simply about finding more land.
It is about identifying land that could become development-ready through active management and infrastructure investment, while understanding the role of land within the wider economic network.
That creates a much better planning question:
How can we make existing employment land work harder?
Can underutilised sites be intensified?
Can outdated industrial areas be renewed?
Can infrastructure unlock land that is already zoned?
Can employment precincts be better connected to existing centres and transport?
Can we protect high-value agricultural and ecological landscapes by making better use of land that is already urbanised?
There will absolutely be situations where greenfield industrial development is necessary.
But "there is demand" shouldn't automatically mean "find another paddock."
What does a genuinely good industrial precinct look like?
Perhaps we need a new checklist.
Not just:
Is the land zoned?
Is there road access?
Can a B-double get there?
Is there enough hardstand?
Is there enough car parking?
But also:
Can workers walk somewhere useful?
Can someone cycle to work safely?
Is public transport genuinely convenient?
Is there meaningful tree canopy?
Is stormwater performing an ecological function?
Are waterways connected?
Is biodiversity being retained or restored?
Can workers access food and services without driving?
Are there places to sit outside?
Is there somewhere to exercise?
Does the precinct feel like a place rather than a collection of lots?
Does each development contribute to a larger green network?
These aren't aesthetic questions.
They're productivity, climate, transport and quality-of-life questions.
Industrial land can be part of the public realm
There's also a cultural shift worth considering.
An industrial precinct doesn't have to become a shopping centre or a lifestyle destination.
It still needs to function as employment land.
Trucks need to move.
Factories need access.
Warehouses need loading areas.
Security matters.
But the people working there shouldn't disappear from the design equation.
Thousands of people can spend eight or ten hours a day inside these landscapes.
They deserve shade.
They deserve trees.
They deserve somewhere to eat lunch.
They deserve safe walking routes.
They deserve access to public transport.
They deserve a landscape that doesn't feel like an enormous car park.
And the public shouldn't necessarily have to be excluded from every part of these environments either.
Green corridors, waterways, cycle routes and appropriately designed public spaces can connect employment precincts to the wider city without compromising their industrial function.
Landscape architecture has a bigger role to play
This is where landscape architecture becomes much more than planting plans.
The industrial developments being planned across NSW are going to shape the everyday experience of millions of people for decades.
The landscape architect can help coordinate:
ecology + water + movement + climate + public space + identity + employment.
That means getting involved early.
Not after the warehouse footprint has been fixed.
Not after the car park has swallowed the site.
Not after the stormwater strategy has already been engineered.
Landscape should help structure the development from the beginning.
NSW is about to build a lot of industrial land
There is no avoiding the need.
NSW needs places for manufacturing.
It needs logistics.
It needs construction supply.
It needs freight.
It needs businesses.
It needs jobs closer to where people live.
The Government's current industrial lands strategy reflects that reality.
But there is a choice in how we deliver it.
We can continue producing industrial estates that are essentially:
roads + warehouses + hardstand + cars.
Or we can start treating employment land as another part of the city.
A productive part.
An ecological part.
A connected part.
A human part.
The Western Sydney Aerotropolis gives NSW an enormous laboratory for testing this idea.
The Illawarra-Shoalhaven presents another version of the challenge — how to accommodate jobs and economic transformation without treating productive rural landscapes as an unlimited supply of development land.
The opportunity is sitting in front of us.
The next industrial estate shouldn't just move goods.
It should also move people, support biodiversity, manage water, provide shade, create better working environments and connect back into the wider city.
Because the question isn't whether NSW should develop more employment land.
It's whether we're willing to make the land around employment work harder.
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