‘An ardent lover of cities’: Sonja Lyneham's contributions to urban planning practice

ABSTRACT

Sonja Lyneham's planning career extended from the late-1960s to the mid-2010s, commencing as a junior member of the team formulating the 1971 City of Sydney Strategic Plan and evolving to direct major planning projects at state and national levels of government in Australia, the Asia-Pacific arena and Eastern Europe. The evolution of planning practice over the course of her career is reflected in diverse engagements, informed here by five main themes – gender, data, neo-liberalism, collaboration and infrastructure. Drawing on memoirs, interviews and extant documentation, the paper appraises Lyneham's life and career as a practitioner who brought a strong economic approach and personal commitment to progressive social change befitting the changing times.

KEYWORDS:

• Sonya Lyneham
• biography
• Sydney
• planning consultant

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge access to documentation and general assistance facilitated by Sonja Lyneham's children Natasha Nankivell and Peter Lyneham. Feedback on her life and career was kindly supplied by a large number of friends, former colleagues and acquaintances: Michael Bray, Raymond Bunker, Barbara Cail, Darrel Conybeare, David Chessell, Charles Curran, Susan Chessell, Philip Cox, Alexander Cuthbert, Charles Curran, Doug Daines, Garry Fielding, Carlos Frias, Charles Hill, Sylvia Hrovatin, Neil Ingham, Gabrielle Kibble, Kara Krason, Jon Lang, Helen Lochhead, Robert Lyneham, Joe Marson, Peter Montgomery, Penny Murray, Geraldine Paton, Imelda Roche, Victoria Rubensohn, Michael Sorkin, Peter Spearritt, Lang Walker, Stephen Wanat, John Whitehouse and David Wilmoth. These email and interview communications from 2016 to 2019 are referenced in the text as ‘pc’. We have made use of their insights in this paper but the findings reported and conclusions drawn are ours alone. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive commentaries.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a small grant 2016–2019 from the Lyneham Research Fund of the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales.