Macquarie Park Suburb Review

Summary: Sydney’s modernised north shore base for a lot of tech and other big-business leanings, Macquarie Park mixes together solid urban planning with a reasonably central location.

It’s the focal point for many daily commuters – both workers and students alike – and has seen near-constant redevelopment over the past few years, now serving as a fairly viable employment alternative to the Sydney CBD.

Everything here feels very modern and well-kept, and its still-fairly-recent shopping and public transport additions are a plus, yet its traffic issues and lack of character make it feel a little sterile. It can be decent value for apartment-dwellers who work within the suburb itself in particular, however even these denser living options have blown out substantially in price in recent years due to continued excess demand.

Key stats

I think it must have been around 1994 when I first got my hands on the video game “SimCity 2000” as a little kid. For those who don’t know, it’s a game where you assume the role of a virtual mayor and plan out cities, their infrastructure, zoning, public transport and the like while balancing the needs of the populace. I shudder to think how many hours of my childhood I wasted playing that game.

As the game advanced, you received newer, enhanced city elements such as cycleways, more modern glass buildings, urban micro-parks, metros and other ‘high tech’ city planning options. Once you reached a certain point, it unlocked a type of building called an “Arcology” – a massive, futuristic, self-contained city-in-a-building in which people could live, work, shop, and play without having to go anywhere else.

We’re not quite there in the real world yet, but present-day Macquarie Park is still perhaps the closest thing I’ve felt to reflecting a ‘SimCity’ town in real life in present-day Australia. It’s still all very slick and modern and solidly-planned, and everything feels shiny and new given the entire suburb has been perpetually undergoing a state of reconstruction for multiple years now.

Given everything here is still fairly new and modernly-designed, it does feel quite cool and mildly futuristic, but it’s also not hard to see how people could easily label it sterile and soulless depending on their tastes.

Many of Macquarie Park’s older red-brick apartment blocks have progressively been bought out and demolished by developers, and replaced with sleek, slick-glassed beehives for both work and living purposes.

While purchasing property here means you’re getting a semi-reasonably-priced mid-or-high-density home given the newness of them with all the mod-cons, how all this rapidity of apartment construction here affects the resulting durability of some of these buildings in the long run remains to be seen.

A Work in Progress

At its core, Macquarie Park is mainly a professional, employment-oriented suburb served with a side of education courtesy of its university. It serves as the second-largest business precinct in all of Sydney in terms of office space, and many big businesses and instantly-recognisable major brands call the suburb home.

As a result it’s much more commercially-focused than many of the other suburbs outside of the Sydney CBD itself, and even adjacent to it on the north shore, although more and more high-density residential is being added to its streetscape all the time.

There’s been obvious efforts made to help with the suburb’s viability as a place to live, rather than just commute. It all starts with the still-relatively-recent addition of the Macquarie Park and Macquarie University metro stations, which have helped fill the gaps of public transport ever since previous direct rail lines were removed.

While the metro has almost immediately become heavily-used ever since it launched a while back, its serving as a connector both to the main heavy rail into & onward from the city and elsewhere on the North Shore has definitely helped – particularly given the road situation surrounding Macquarie Park.

Macquarie Park’s location and the rapidity/regularity of metro services combine to make for an incredibly quick journey into Central given the distance it covers in a relatively short time. Just over 20 minutes from Macquarie Park Station into the city is an absolute boon in modern-day Sydney terms, and the project should be commended in this regard.

Road congestion has been and continues to be a major negative here, as the suburb sees heavy traffic in peak hours when a lot of commuters from different areas converge either to get here, or on the way to where they’re going.

While its fairly central location is convenient for other reasons, Macquarie Park remains a focal point during rush hours for both cars and trucks alike, and thus avoiding driving in, out or around the suburb is desirable if at all possible.

It does see a very solid array of bus services that travel along major roads like the M2 which alleviate this somewhat; combine it with the metro and you’ve got a suburb in which connectivity remains one of its greatest overall selling points.

All this traffic also adds to one of Macquarie Park’s other major flaws as a place to live: noise.

Its blend of traffic plus near-constant activity of construction and new buildings going up means there’s equipment being used at most hours of the day. While this may settle down in a few years, it’s a decent lifestyle factor to consider if you’re a light sleeper planning to get a decent night’s sleep while living here.

“There’s been obvious recent efforts made to help with the suburb’s viability as a place to live, rather than just commute.”

On the plus side, the modern attitudes to urban planning have made quite a few positives both to Macquarie Park’s environment and layout.

It’s greener than you might think – there’s an emphasis on implementing an increased range of nice parklands which are all kept in very good condition – particularly in the suburb’s north over the motorway.

Spots like Fontenoy Park come with a mix of solid open greenspace and a good helping of playground equipment for the kids, while there’s enough little pocket-parks and tree cover adjacent to most of its major office buildings in its central hub portion as well considering how built-up it is.

Plus, the extended greenery of Lane Cove National Park is also right on the suburb’s doorstep for times you want to more fully immerse yourself in a less-refined version of nature.

Likewise, Macquarie Park’s range of amenities continues to grow. Efforts are being made to make the suburb almost entirely self-sustained, so that you won’t have to go anywhere else for your daily needs.

Macquarie Centre is its focal point for shopping and retail, and is very well-equipped, with hundreds of stores including all major supermarkets and department stores represented, as well as a mix of other shops/amenities (including cinemas) as well. Shame about the complexity and general pain-in-the-neck layout of its carpark, though.

As a suburb, it’s also a decent example of incorporating mixed-zoning, with many of its newer residential apartment blocks having stores/restaurants/cafes of various kinds on the ground floor, adding to both lifestyle convenience & walkability. Macquarie Park’s terrain being mostly flat also helps a lot in this regard, and getting around on foot & by bike is quite good in most pockets of the suburb.

In terms of housing, Macquarie Park is almost entirely mid & high-density apartments. Those looking for extra space to raise the kids will be disappointed; there essentially no detached housing, and only a small supply of semi’s/townhouses (less than 10% in total in the entire suburb), and the lack of living space and schools makes for a suburb that’s not really suited for families.

Price-wise, in the not-too-distant past, Macquarie Park used to present “okay” value for those happy with apartment living in a busier environment, however ever since after the pandemic days went by that situation has changed markedly.

The lack of housing and even apartment supply in the northern areas of Sydney meant that things shot up very quickly, and now even its apartments sell for a fair bit over the Sydney median price. 

Purchase prices for smaller new apartments now sit at the $870,000.00 mark (typically two-bedrooms), which is no longer cheap.

This price figure also tends to fluctuate up and down fairly wildly in Macquarie Park versus other suburbs, which tend to trend up more gradually instead. This is mostly due to every new large apartment block that comes online here typically temporarily knocking median prices down a shade for a while, before ever-present demand scales them back up again.

Given the suburb’s proximity & fairly easy connectivity to the likes of Chatswood, Ryde, the CBD, and even Parramatta – it may be worth paying the price, depending on your work location/situation. However it’s not a bargain any more like it could have been considered just a couple of years in the past due to the recent rapid price spikes. 

And of course, adding an additional bedroom quickly ramps up the price even more for something non-shoebox-sized. One-bedders, including some of the older inventory can occasionally be had for a fair bit cheaper, but they’re growing increasingly rare.

The other major downside to Macquarie Park is that it lacks some kind of central meeting place or communal hub. There’s not really any kind of focal point outside of the Macquarie Uni campus (for students), and as a result it’s not surprising that residents could feel disconnected from one another when trying to set up some kind of a long-term base here.

It’s fine for those who are content with living here on a temporary basis for a few years, however, and it’s certainly a slice of “convenient living” despite its lack of ‘village charm’ – which may not even be important to you in the first place depending on your tastes.

The Verdict

Macquarie Park is still a suburb in transition, and is likely to remain so for a couple more years. It’s very sleek and efficient, and as a place to work feels quite a lot cleaner, more open, and less hectic than working in the “true” Sydney CBD , although it lacks its charming older architecture.

Likewise, for those looking to focus on studies or their career for a couple of years who want all major conveniences at their fingertips, the suburb serves its purpose quite well for a rental.

Young professionals and professional couples can take advantage of its mix of modern cafes, public spaces, and shopping and then hop on public transport to experience a bit more of “real” Sydney in short order.

The problem comes when looking at its long-term prospects and as a place to settle. There’s not really much of a precedent for a suburb like this elsewhere in the city (somewhere like Zetland is also in a similar spot although more residentially-focused), and as to whether a proper community will be established.

Even for small families who are okay with apartment life, there are better suburbs nearby that offer a bit more stability and breathing room while still retaining urban access.

We’ll likely have to re-evaluate what Macquarie Park has become sometime around 2030 to see if it remains what it’s intended to be – likely around the time SimCity 4000 is released.