The revised Sydney Metropolitan Strategy should be called the Western Sydney Metropolitan Strategy. Re-naming the document would remind governments where the real urban growth and urban change action will take place over the next 25 years.

The growth projections are clear. By 2035, it is expected that Sydney will grow to 6 million people, up from 4.5 million today.

To accommodate this growth, Sydney will need to supply an additional 660,000 dwellings. Yet 400,000 of these are to be located in Western Sydney.

The mix is important however. Just over half of the new dwellings for Western Sydney (222,000) will be in sites in existing urban areas, while just under half (178,000) will be in greenfields locations.

In other words, over the next 25 years we will see significant residential re-development in a number of existing Western Sydney suburbs. This will chiefly involve the construction of higher density dwellings along key transport corridors.

It is important to note that Western Sydney will be responsible for as much new medium density housing over the next 25 years as will the established parts of Sydney.

In fact, recent data from the Bureau of Statistics suggest that this is already the case. It is pretty much a myth, then, that Sydney's established inner and northern suburbs are the target areas for medium density housing. Increasingly Western Sydney is doing the heavy lifting in providing sites for new apartments and town houses.

At the same time, though, Western Sydney will also provide the sites for 90 per cent of all greenfields suburban growth, the remaining 10 per cent being allocated to the Central Coast. As ever, there are expensive infrastructure implications of this growth.

Of course, a metropolitan strategy is not just about providing new dwellings. By 2035 Sydney will need a net additional 760,000 jobs, half of which will need to be located in Western Sydney. Otherwise Western Sydney's unsustainable long-distance commuting rates will become even worse.

The problem with the revised metropolitan strategy is that it is silent on where these extra jobs will be located and how they will be generated.

Which means Sydney's revised metropolitan strategy is a long way short of completion. It makes no sense to steer 1 million more people into Western Sydney without planning for where they will work and how they will get to work. These things should not be after thoughts. They should be central to the design of a workable, sustainable 21st century city in a rich developed nation.

Phillip O'Neill is Professor and Director, Urban Research Centre, The University of Western Sydney.