NSW Premier Mike Baird has unveiled final plans for a 200 hectare “super park” in Western Sydney by JMD Design that will compare with London’s Hyde Park and New York’s Central Park.

The $14 million Bungarribee Super Park, located in the northern section of the Western Sydney Parklands and bordering Blacktown, Doonside and Eastern Creek, is the largest expansion of recreational facilities in Western Sydney since Homebush’s Bicentennial Park (189ha) was constructed.

It will feature 15,000 trees, four kilometres of bicycle and walking paths, several playgrounds, an events space, a gum tree forest, and a café. Other features include an aeroplane shaped tree house at the same height as the tree canopy that will provide a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the entire park.

“It will be a place for locals to relax, explore and picnic in the great outdoors and for international tourists to experience the wonders of Australia’s bush in a unique urban setting,” said Premier Baird, at the launch of the project.

Designed with the 202020 Vision in mind, which aims to create 20 per cent more green cover in urban areas by 2020, the Bungarribee Super Park took out a planning excellence prize at the 2014 Australian Institute of Landscape Architects NSW Awards.

“The design carefully and logically inserts program and circulation to preserve and heighten the unique site qualities of scale, sky and ecology,” said JMD Design.

“The ‘heart’ preserves the delicate ecology of the grasslands, the ‘loop’ provides circulation throughout the site, the ‘redgum runway, a thousand trees’ gives scale and signals the former military runway, and the ‘urban forest’ as plantation provides an ongoing source of material for the Parklands.”

Preliminary works including the construction of the walking and cycling loop and planning of the bushland corridor began in 2014, with the park due for completion by 2019.

Geraldine Chua

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