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A world city can bring in people in from all over the world to live in multicultural society that can cater for them. Sydney's population is growing over 4.5 million putting pressure on space and infrastructure.. Over the next 30 years the population of Sydney will increase by 40600 people per year. This new influx of people is expected to need 640000 new homes, 500000 new jobs, 7500 hectares of industrial space, 6.8 million square metres of land and 3.7 million square metres of retail space. These are expected to put a huge strain on the cities infrastructure and land causing urban planners to come up with new ideas on urban development.

The solution used in Sydney during most of the 20th century has been urban sprawl. Urban sprawl is where a city move outwards to cater for the population expansion, expanding with the people, needing more and more infrastructure to ferry people to the urban centers. Over the time the Western Suburbs of Sydney have grown from small towns unconnected from Sydney to huge suburbs such as Parramtta and Liverpool. These suurbs are now becoming cities in themselves and are filling up. Huge housing developments are being set up further and further West and the Sydney basin will soon run out of space. Urban sprawl is no longer an effective management plan for Sydney.

The new plan that has been used by other cities like New York for decades is Urban Consolidation. Urban Consolidation is the building up of land, instead of building outwards you build upwards to accomodate more people. Large apartment blocks and skyscrapers can house lot of people without using up too much land. Housing lots of people in a small area is cheaper and needs less infrastrucure from the government but is not as likeable by residents who prefer their own space rather than sharing it with others. This is what has happened in the CBD and incrasingly in the Western suburbs of Sydney.