Surry Hills to Redfern: The Inner South That Defines Contemporary Sydney

The inner south suburbs of Surry Hills and Redfern, the dense residential and commercial precincts between the Sydney CBD and the inner south that have been at the centre of the Sydney creative class, the small bar and restaurant scene, and the technology business formation over the past two decades, provide the urban neighbourhood character that the combination of the Victorian terrace housing stock, the multi-ethnic working-class heritage, and the arts and hospitality economy that creativity attracts to the affordable inner city creates in the classic pattern of gentrification that these suburbs have followed from their industrial and working-class origins. The result is the most urban, most diverse, and most culturally intense neighbourhood environment in the country.

Crown Street in Surry Hills, the main commercial strip that extends from Foveaux Street to Cleveland Street and through which the Saturday morning pedestrian traffic of the neighbourhood's residents and visitors creates the street life that only the density and the diversity of Surry Hills sustains, provides the benchmark for the neighbourhood commercial strip that Sydney uses as the standard against which other inner suburb strips are compared. The concentration of independent restaurants, small bars, fashion retailers, and creative businesses on Crown Street reflects the economic ecology of an inner suburb that the creative and professional class has chosen as the preferred Sydney neighbourhood for the combination of the heritage architecture, the walkability, and the social energy.

Redfern, the suburb immediately east of the CBD that has been at the centre of Sydney's Aboriginal community life for generations and that the Eveleigh technology and creative precinct development is transforming into one of the most contested and most dynamic urban renewal sites in Australia, provides the most complex and the most socially significant story in contemporary Sydney urban development. The tension between the established Aboriginal community's connection to the Block and the development pressure that the Eveleigh precinct's success generates for the surrounding property market creates the displacement risk that community advocates and planning academics identify as the defining challenge of Redfern's urban transformation.

The Carriageworks, the adaptive reuse of the former Eveleigh railway workshops into the performing arts and community venue that has become one of Sydney's most significant cultural spaces, anchors the arts and culture dimension of the Eveleigh precinct redevelopment. The venue's program, combining the contemporary performing arts, the Carriageworks Farmers Market, and the community events that the industrial heritage of the buildings sustains, provides the cultural anchor that the precinct requires to maintain its creative character alongside the commercial development that surrounds it.

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