| Abstract: | North Ryde in Sydney provides an instructive case study of the emergence in little over a generation of a new suburban activity centre on a greenfield site. While its image is that of a siliconised ‘technopole’, the real significance lies in the evolution of the wider locality into some-thing more akin perhaps to an American ‘edge city’. The notion of the ‘technoburb’ seems the most apposite. The evolution of North Ryde is seen as exemplifying the restructuring of metropolitan areas into multi-nucleated regions, the strategic role of the state in setting certain ground rules for development, the rise of the information economy, the impact of globalisation of economic activity, the dependent nature of the Australian economy, and the gap that can exist between image and reality in an Australian suburban ‘hi tech’ environment. |
