Living in a real-estate catalogue: Waterloo and Zetland

Here's a two-fer, covering two somewhat controversial inner-city suburbs. 

These two are a real testament to the rapid growth that Sydney has experienced in the past few years, and (love it or hate it) are an indication of the direction Sydney is currently going in.

Waterloo

This isn't Abba, this is the inner-city Sydney suburb of Waterloo. 

I strolled into Waterloo from the northern end, through Redfern. My knowledge of this area is "brand new residential towers", but what I actually saw when I arrived were older style, medium-low density terraces and houses sitting on leafy streets. 

It's surprising to see such wide and quiet streets so close to the CBD, but in a word, I would describe the immediate area as "pleasant".

I read that Hillsong has a site in Waterloo so I thought I'd go take a look. To say that I'm not a fan of Hillsong's brand of megawealthy megachurches would be an understatement, but you can't deny their "success" as a now global organisation. 

I'm not sure what I expected to see, but all I did see here was a building painted black with some Jesus-y stuff written on it, and the free shuttle buses which take worshippers to the Hillsong services that I presume are held here. 

Moving on, I strolled through a low-density commercial district which houses things like furniture stores, and a billboard for everyone's favourite Bond-villain-esque bedding mascot.

Have a good sleep, Mr Bond.

Continuing on, I did see some shiny new apartments, but nothing that you wouldn't see anywhere in Sydney these days.

Other points of interest include this huge housing block which I believe is used as housing commission

and a very quiet skatepark (but to be fair it was Monday afternoon when I did my little tour).

Strolling through some more shiny apartments took me to the next suburb...

Zetland

The first thing to greet me in Zetland was a dealership of very expensive cars. I probably will never purchase a Ferrari or Maserati in my life, but maybe if I include these photos on here, some Italian marketing executive might offer me a vehicle. 

Probably not though (a boy can dream, right?)

Walking down the main artery which the dealership sat on, I continued along to Green Square Station. (As a side. I always thought Green Square was its own suburb. Nope.)

The station is a modern enough building, surrounded by construction. This will become a bit of a theme in this post.

I went inside to see if there was anything interesting (there wasn't - just a standard underground station) but caught a glimpse of some of the new apartment development in the area as I took the escalators back to the surface.

Most of the rest of Zetland holds the super-shiny new apartments that I expected to see, but there is still a huge amount of construction which I expect will result in many more apartments.

For the number of apartments here though, I saw very few people walking around. This almost feels more like an office park than a residential suburb. 

At least there's some green space.

My loop through Zetland ended up taking me back to an old friend...

Zetland: New, shiny, and working on getting shinier. 

Waterloo Part II

If my first foray into Waterloo was on the "old side", this time I was definitely on the "new side". 

This was the Waterloo I was expecting to see.

Rows and rows of brand new apartments.

Brand new roads (even Pokemon Go didn't realise this road existed yet).

More apartments.

And some strange phallic "monument" sprouting from the earth.

Interestingly, there are a handful of leftover old buildings (but not many). The construction crows have already begun circling on these ones. I can't help but think that the older style houses and streets from Waterloo Part 1's days are numbered.

Having had my fix of construction for the day, I sampled some sugar from the local Asian Grocery in a rather quiet park, before heading home.

Waterloo: Yo Sydney, I heard you like density.