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The Forum > Article Comments > Building cities is Australia's next export industry > Comments

Building cities is Australia's next export industry : Comments

By Edward Blakely, published 4/11/2010

Australia does a lot of things well, and one of them is building world class cities.

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Perhaps Pericles after the Rail Link is passed!
Posted by we are unique, Friday, 5 November 2010 10:28:42 PM
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This is utter nonsense written by some fool who is definately not in touch with reality.

Central planning has not worked in Sydney but has been the main cause of congestion and destruction of Sydney suburbs.
Developers must be clapping their hands as they whack up more and more chook pens for human habitation.

Instead of maintaining and providing infrastructure to keep up with population the planners have decided to cram as many buildings together so as to use the existing infrastructure and this has led to problems that are becoming evident now and will continue to become evident as the existing infrastructure collapses through lack of any maintenance.
Posted by 4freedom, Monday, 8 November 2010 9:49:31 AM
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Edward Blakelywrote 4 November 2010:

>... Christie report on transportation ...

Fortunately the NSW Government has made one step in the right direction by moving rapidly to extend the Inner West Sydney Light Rail Extension. But that is relatively easy as much of the infrastructure is already in place: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/01/bicycling-sydney-light-rail-extension.html

>... new sustainable industrial base ...

We need to pick industries where it is feasible to compete internationally. Japan has spent decades on high speed rail technology. More recently South Korea and China have purchased technology from Europe and used that to create their own export products. China is now mass producing very high speed trains and the infrastructure to go with them. Australia may be able to find a niche, perhaps in software, logistics, environmental planning or track side buildings, but it is unlikely to be able to compete building track or trains.

>... new industries to build the urban forms ...

As Professor Brenda Vale and Doctor Robert Vale detailed in their 2010 Walter Burley Griffin Memorial Lecture last week in Canberra, sustainable cities are mostly a matter of attitude not technology: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/11/canberras-ecological-footprint.html

Building smaller homes and public transport does not require any radical new technology. But some can help. As an example the Australian National University has a student apartment building built rapidly from shipping container modules: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/10/shipping-container-apartment-building.html

To help with a more sustainable planet I teach green ICT : http://www.tomw.net.au/green/
Posted by tomw, Monday, 8 November 2010 10:30:30 AM
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The thing is, tomw, we're not actually any good at any of these either.

>>Australia may be able to find a niche, perhaps in software, logistics, environmental planning or track side buildings, but it is unlikely to be able to compete building track or trains.<<

I cannot think of a single success story for Australian software in the transport or logistics area. If there were such a thing, both Sydney and Melbourne would already have an integrated ticketing system for public transport, such as they have had for decades in other major cities around the world.

And where is there evidence of our internationally-recognized "environmental planning"? Is that actually an industry? That is, are we talking about something larger than a handful of "consultants"?

I've no idea what the world market is like for "track side buildings", by the way - do you? Does anybody? How big is it? And what would be our competitive edge?

Sorry, those are all areas where we would be starting from a long way back in the pack, and with some massive handicaps to overcome before any could be considered export-ready.

And what's with this?

>>...the Australian National University has a student apartment building built rapidly from shipping container modules<<

On my first visit to Kingston Jamaica in the 60s, there were many people living in home units that had been fashioned from the boxes used to import cars.

I find that quite significant.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 8 November 2010 4:27:04 PM
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Indeed Pericles, I think the old saying "You cannot know England from what only England knows" applies quite well to this whole discussion;

The odd thing is, most of our shortcomings should have been apparent enough even without the evidence of most of the other first-world doing these much better in any one form of development than we are (and we can't even really claim credit for generally doing them all well either).
Posted by King Hazza, Monday, 8 November 2010 9:27:24 PM
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