Detailed though it is, the plan is only a general guide for the precinct, and each development proposal must jump through the usual planning process.

There were 554 submissions on the proposal to rezone the land directly above the metro station, overwhelmingly negative. Many form letters were addressed directly to then-premier Gladys Berejiklian, who was the member for Willoughby.

Most lamented the proposed density and existing lack of open space. They said there was already an excess of apartments in the area, and worried overshadowing would make Crows Nest village “a dark and uninviting place”.

Many were also suspicious about why Sydney Metro – “a mere rail authority”, as one submission put it – was involved in over-station development anyway, with some letters calling for an inquiry into the agency’s relationship with developers.

“To milk the Crows Nest over-the-station development of every last drop that it is possible of yielding, and to hell with the rest, is outright obscene,” wrote one Wollstonecraft resident. “This sort of plan that sacrifices the quality of our lives for blatant greed is not ‘planning’, it is rubbish.”

The government subsequently modified its position. One of the first things decided in the 2036 plan was to reduce the scale of the buildings directly above the metro station. The tallest tower would be no more than 27 storeys, and the number of new units was slashed from 350 to less than 150.

The buildings had already been decoupled from the station itself, so they won’t be built by the time the metro starts operating.

Later, a concept proposal for the site reduced the height of the tallest commercial building again to 21 storeys. Another 683 objections arrived. But the concept was approved in December 2020, and a year later the first building – a nine-storey commercial tower known as “site C” – was also approved by the state government.

Three days before Christmas last year, the government announced it had awarded the rights for the other two towers – one commercial and one residential – to local developer Thirdi Group, which will need to submit development applications for both buildings.

But all of that only deals with the space directly above the metro station. The whole of Crows Nest stands to be transformed. And many residents feel they’ve already had enough transformation.

Cranes are everywhere. Just in the vicinity there is the JQZ development on Christie Street, a $1.3 billion, 650-unit complex promising to “bring CBD style living to the North Shore”, the 46-storey Landmark building, and plans lodged by Elegant Group for a 39-storey tower.

Stockland has also flagged plans to redevelop its IBM building into an office tower three times taller than the existing one, while developers are circling in St Leonards South, a precinct just west of the heavy rail line that was recently rezoned for high-density residential.

But much more is envisaged. The government’s 2036 plan noted existing approvals on the Pacific Highway have established a “height expectation” in the area for towers up to 50 storeys. The plan sets out indicative zoning and height limits for each parcel of land in the precinct.

Those heights range from 17 to 30 storeys along the highway to four or eight storeys on the blocks behind, and some 16- to 30-storey towers on other nearby blocks. The heights scale down toward the existing Crows Nest village area, which remains at two to three storeys with mixed-use zoning.

Opposition to the plan focuses on the tallest buildings. But when it comes to the general zoning of the area, residents and the government are not on markedly different pages. John Hancox, chair of the Wollstonecraft Precinct for North Sydney Council, says he would accept 11 to 12 storeys above the metro station, and eight storeys in the vicinity.

“We recognise that they’ve got to get some of their money back,” he said. “[But] why not even it out a bit? Don’t go so high that you’re going to cause problems in the suburb of Wollstonecraft. You’re killing the people who live on the western side of those buildings.”

A version of this argument will play out at every new metro station being built across Sydney. As this series has already touched on, plans to rezone land for higher density near Marrickville and Dulwich Hill stations have already been put on hold following a backlash from inner west residents.

In other parts of Sydney, though, the response has been much more muted. Towards the end of last year, the government sought public submissions about over-station development at the Parramatta and Olympic Park metro stations. They received just 16 and 17 submissions respectively, with only four or five objections (one anonymous objector wrote: “None of us need a metro coming close to our family house to destroy our peaceful day-by-day life”).

The Urban Development Institute of Australia, an industry body, will make the case for much more aggressive redevelopment around new metro stations at a pre-election lunch event to be attended on Wednesday by Planning Minister Anthony Roberts and his opposite number Paul Scully.

Roberts – who was asked for an interview for this series – is the member for Lane Cove, where he faces Climate 200-backed independent Victoria Davidson and Labor’s Penny Pedersen.

Scully, who is from Wollongong, told a Committee for Sydney summit last week that a NSW Labor government would seek to get higher density out of the metro stations located closer to the CBD. Scully singled out Crows Nest as somewhere that needed to do the heavy lifting, indicating all the existing plans could be revisited.

“I’m worried we’re again failing to align population growth and public transport investment,” he said. “When we get the opportunity to deliver more affordable and key worker housing near metro stations, we should be taking it.”

Peter Tulip, the chief economist at the Centre for Independent Studies, agrees. Asked how high the development near metro stations should be, he says: “I think it should be very tall buildings. Why limit it? Why not let the buyers decide? If people want to live in the Empire State Building, what’s the rationale for stopping it?”

Tulip says he commonly encounters people who objected to high-density buildings but ended up loving the amenities that came with it, such as new restaurants and more frequent buses. “People really undervalue the benefits of higher density ... politically speaking, that is the most important misunderstanding,” he says.

But north shore residents such as Meredith Trevallyn-Jones aren’t buying into that equation. For her, better public transport and more restaurants are by-the-by; the things that really matter are parks, playing fields, and community facilities.

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“We didn’t have this problem back in the 1950s,” she says. “The city was growing fast. We were just spreading out at the edges. A few poultry farms got turned into new housing. Now we’re trying to retrofit this very expensive infrastructure into an existing city.

“I was brought up in a suburb where I walked past one of the last poultry farms to get to the local primary school, which had two playing fields of its own. Maybe we don’t need that in the future, but I’d hate to see it where we go too far in the other direction and end up with metro stations, cafes and not much else.”

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