Urban planning guru Sam Austin reveals hidden Aussie bushland city near Sydney
Located in present-day North Arm Cove, just north of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley, the city includes a complex web of housing lots with plans for train and port terminals and administrative buildings.
'And even crazier, it almost became the country's capital,' urban planner Sam Austin revealed in a widely-watched social media post this week.
'From a satellite photo, you might assume it's just bushland. But hidden under the trees is a fully designed city.'
The lost city, which was to be called Port Stephens City, was designed by legendary architect Walter Burley Griffin, the urban planner who designed Canberra.
Mr Austin, speaking with NewsWire from Canada, said he spotted the outlines of Port Stephens City seven or eight years ago while 'playing around with Google Maps'.
'I was just playing around came across it and thought, 'wow, what is this?' he said.
'Why is there this weird subdivision patch hidden in the trees? I did some googling and discovered North Arm Cove and thought it was absolutely fascinating.'
Canberra pulled investment away from Port Stephens City and it was never developed.
The area, which sits within the Mid Coast Council area, is now a 'paper subdivision', meaning it has been legally divided into lots, but has never been physically developed with roads or power infrastructure.
'It's really fascinating. There are examples like this all over NSW,' Mr Austin told NewsWire.
'They are called paper subdivisions. A lot of big paper subdivisions were made 100, 150 years ago, by various surveyors, with the intention of creating new towns across the country.'
Mr Griffin envisioned a 'garden city' for Port Stephens City, similar to Canberra's design, typified by expanding concentric rings of development all connected via train.
'You can see that really clearly in the Port Stephens city design,' Mr Austin said.
'It has a very central rail terminal and then you can see a concentric circle design that extends out of it.'
North Arm Cove has remained dormant for decades, but there is gathering interest in developing the area in light of the country's sharpening housing crisis.
But any development will likely be complex and expensive.
There is no road, power or drainage infrastructure in North Arm Cove and the council has stated repeatedly it would be 'prohibitively expensive' to build there.
It is not zoned for residential development, but a potential change in zoning to 'environmental living' could crack open the door to more housing.
There are about 4000 lots in North Arm Cove, with about 1000 of them owned by the council.
Mr Austin also expressed some caution about new development in what he called 'pristine bushland'.
'I much prefer to see urban consolidation, or development around existing settlements, particularly given there is very strong ecological value in that area,' he said.
'I do have some reservations on broad scale development in essentially pristine bushland, which is what it is.'
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