In Adelaide, the amount of infill developing going on to build three or four compact homes on what used to be a family block should make Ross Elliot very happy. Since Adelaide has relatively very little public park space (~5% of metropolitan area) we are seeing our city tranformed into a hot and dusty concreted landscape as the 30% of uncovered space required by councils becomes the driveway and little green is left save a few token pot plants where once half the block used to be garden. What a wonderful future we have before us as the baby-boomers (having ignored the warnings about unsustainable growth in the 1970s and then having raped the Earth for the following three decades in a growth and consumption frenzy so that resources are now in decline) now demand to live a comfortable retirement. To do so that they will trash our suburbs with even more property development and import ever more cheap workers to wipe their invalid backsides while not giving a damn about the future they are leaving for their children. And their retirement plans are about to tbe blown away anyway as peak oil takes an ever more throttling hold on the world economy and the baby-boomers debt-fuelled consumption and growth frenzy meets its inevitable end. Oh, I am soooo looking forward to the next decade and I do not feel sorry for the Boomers. They will get their just desserts but their children will be inheriting a trashed world and will be forced to pay for the Boomer's mistakes. Baby Boomers and their comfortable and convenient retirement be damned......

Yes Ross there are plenty of examples of the type of 'intensive cottage development' you refer to; many going in around the Perth Hills suburb of Kalamunda where I live.

Seems to me that 2 story terrace houses may be a better use of land, allowing more park space.

Michael, I know that many baby boomers have been selfish but so also are many in your generation. We're all in this boat together and need to find solutions together. How to build community again is a problem for all ages; let's work together. I do agree with you that housing security for young people is more important than for the old.

Immediate tax reforms - abolish negative gearing and tighten capital gains tax - would go a long way to bringing housing prices down by reducing speculation. Greedy people of you generation and mine have been gulity of fuelling this housing bubble.

Michael I'm so glad I don't live in your head, it must be a horrible place.

That doesn't let you off though Ross. Your "jam them in" ideas may not be quite the hell Michael sees, but it is still a very bad idea.

I am well past your 64, living on 20 acres with the horses, dog cats, birds & fish, left behind by the kids, as they spread their wings. Yes it's a bit much to maintain, & thoughts of a place in the suburbs, with less work did have some appeal.

That was before a recent trip to Sydney. I had look at The Shire, where a girlfriend had lived, a short work from Sutherland station, in the late 50s.

It was a lovely place, nicely kept homes, nice yards, plenty of shrubbery, & attractive streets. That was before infill.

Now it is just nasty. Buildings jammed in where there was not enough room, no drives to a garage out the back, or gardens, just buildings. Streets packed with cars parked nose to tail for kilometers, & all over the foot paths as well.

Yes those were once granny flats, but with granny gone, now they are just cheep rentals, with the cheep people that brings. Homes that would have had windows open all day, now have prison bars in place of curtains, a place where people exist, not live, with a crime rate through the roof.

Ross we all know that upgrading facilities in built up areas, to handle increased population, is more expensive than developing a greenfield sights, so why this effort to justify infill development.

If you wanted to approve transportable granny flats in backyards, later removed, I could perhaps agree, it cost me a fortune for a legal granny flat with todays regulations, but otherwise, no thanks.

If I were a resident of an inner suburb, I would be fighting you tooth & nail, to stop this destruction of a good lifestyle.

Baby boomers have different standards to the young of today. We learnt how to save money, while being payd a few quid a week. Today it is spend to the limit and then some more. I can-not fathom your argument, about being 64. The world is what you make it. Live for the minute, or think about your future. People that live in each others pocket, you have been doing that for a long time to put up with that. It is not compulsory to live like a swarm of galahs.

While there are retiring couples or singles who want to stay in their old neighbourhood many use the decision to sell their existing inner city dwelling to finance a change in their lives.
Most of the aging couples I know (including myself) have decided to move out into a rural residential location where we can raise pets and chooks and develop a decent garden and orchard.
We grow our own olives to make our own olive oil.
A huge number of Living programmes on TV are about people moving to the country while hardly any are about people moving into the apartments so favoured by the planners.
We live on a hectare of land and while the cottage is small we also have a double garage, and a separate office and sleepout.
You see we don't really retire we just change our mode of work and realise that gardening is so good for our health. We soon develop close relationships with "our butcher" and "our pharmacist" and indeed we have a stall at the weekend local market.
I really don't want anyone telling me how and were to live - especially when these decisions are based of false assumptions.
Let us be.

579 - it was the generation before the Baby Boomers - that lived through the Depression and WWII - that knew frugality. The Baby Boomers were the generation that had the choice between sustainability and rampant growth and consumerism and they chose the latter. To describe their mentality as "spend the inheritance" says it all. Most boomers are ignorant fools believing in perpetual growth in a finite system while younger generations facing debt and the impossiblity of affording a future have retreated into the virtual world of Facebook and other online distractions. The oil price-triggered crash of 2008 and the current intellectually bankrupt policies for solving debt-crises by taking more debt show the shlt-storm that is rapidly coming down on our heads. I am not, actually, so concerned about urban infill and highrise etc because most of it will never be built - we are entering a world of economic decline and "getting by" that will teach Generation Y the lessons that their Depression-era great-grandparents knew.