Landscape is not an object but a subject. Sydney needs visionary proposals with landscape scale and layers of culture as the major consideration in crafting a setting for life. Craig Burton argues that opportunities still exist for landscape integration in major new projects on the post-industrial sites of Sydney's inner harbour. A city becomes its own landscape. It is a story of human-made systems interacting with environment. Sydney's rapid change from a detention centre to an (apparently) democratic market has morphed the landscape formerly under Aboriginal occupation into a vast urban sprawl. Early development aggressively made its mark, and while originally surrounded by nature, it is now development that engulfs nature, fragmenting and dislocating it. The trend of bringing nature back to the city through built landscapes on post-industrial sites, or by the conservation of natural ones, developed in the late 1960s with the establishment of Illoura Reserve (formerly Peacock Point) at Balmain, and a number of inner Sydney Harbour sites reconfigured as parkland since. In the 1970s, disconnected areas of bushland, former fortification sites and colonial period sites were recognised in the formation of Sydney Harbour National Park. After a battle by local Hunters Hill residents against developers in 1971, Kellys Bush became the site of Sydney's first Green Ban, giving impetus to the conservation movement. It is now listed on the State Heritage Register and the Hunters Hill Council Heritage Schedule.
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