Fire on Cleveland St

AAP has the story.

Welcome, City News readers

A cheerful hello to anyone who has come here after ready the round-up of inner-Sydney "hyperlocal" blogs in City News.

Another take on the Broadway site

The SMH has published another take on the Broadway site. If you can overlook the florid writing style, you'll find a few nuggets in here. My favourite: apparently the cleared site is contributing to an inner-Sydney mouse plague. Eek!

Free public transport is a bad idea

Want to make public transport such a burden on the public purse that no government will invest in it?

Want to send the community the signal that public transport is not worth paying for?

Want to ensure our public transport system degrades to the point where the only people who use it are the people who can't afford to travel in cars?

Then introduce free public transport.

What a stupid idea. Let's hope Premier Rees knocks it on the head, and quickly.

Our trains and trams should be absolute palaces. They should be so good that average commuters are annoyed when circumstances force them to drive. And once they are that good, we won't mind paying a reasonable fee to use them. But unless commuters pick up part of tab, the government and community will always view them as a charity option, and future progress will be impossible.

Capital growth in Chippendale

This quick update from the SMH doesn't add anything new, but it continues the theme — found in so many newspaper articles comparing capital growth across suburbs — that Chippendale is a smart place to buy.

CUB Development put off "indefinitely"

Just spotted on the SMH site: "It's off: Carlton brewery site goes flat."

THE developer behind the massive former Carlton and United Brewery project at Broadway has called an indefinite halt to construction and says the project will not start until the global economy recovers.

The state government is also refusing to let them do any more digging, for fear that it could turn into another World Square.

Sewage works

Food For The Future explains the pipes stacked in the Peace Park are for sewage works to prevent effluent from entering Blackwattle Bay.