Marrickville's progressive, diverse and creative community is supported by its unique built form and character.
Marrickville has an edgy historic and low-scale village feel which over many decades has attracted migrant families and one of the largest collective groups of creative professionals in Sydney.
The former Marrickville council put in place a range of planning mechanisms, including for the Sydenham industrial lands, to encourage creative industries to grow. Indeed, it is this link with the creative industries that saw Marrickville compared with New York's Brooklyn - a renowned artistic hub - by the United States Studies Centre.
This village feel is reinforced by the Victorian and Federation-era housing more than a century old in the areas immediately around the railway station and a diverse range of other housing.
This village feel and potentially the area's status as a creative hub will be obliterated by the generic, Meriton-style block by block redevelopment of many hundreds of homes in streets 400m around the station.
For instance, Warburton St off Illawarra Rd currently contains a row of semi-detached Federation cottages – these are earmarked to be demolished to allow 12-storey unit blocks.
Many submissions to the urban renewal plan have commented negatively on the Revolution apartment block alongside the railway station and it is this form of development which could be replicated across the suburb. By this time, the heart of the old Marrickville that we know and love will largely been gone.
Warburton St at Marrickville where 12-storey development is proposed