No!

Big congested cities serve few, criminals and terrorists, who can hide with virtual impunity in morass of humanity! Paris is old and unplanned archaic obsolescence?

France is what, the size of victoria, with what, four times our population numbers packed in? Even so still has a lot of rural provinces? Which London to a brick? Almost every french citizen would chose? If they but had that option, rapid rail and the electronic highway!

We just do not need to follow this patently failed evolution! But need to grasp the nettle of decentralisation, planned cities connected with rapid rail and the electronic highway!

We have vast space, all we need to add is energy and water! And that is more easily achieved if we include thorium as our principle energy source and breakthrough high tech desalination!

Which could underpin the virtual cost effective drought proofing of Australia!

Alan, you need to stop focusing almost exclusively on the needs of developers and investors! And simply concentrate on the needs and requirements of your fellow Australians!

Which doesn't include being packed and stacked, highly compressed, "negatively geared" targets!

Besides, city dwellers produce 2.5 times more carbon than their country cousins!
Alan B.

The only reason anybody cite European or Us ways of doing things is to setup a excuse for a study tour. Very few is any countries and certainly none in Europe face the problems Australia faces.

You've convinced me Alan, Parris would be one of the worst places on earth to live, I doubt there would be enough oxygen for even one more resident to breath.

Agree Hasbeen, anybody who has spent as much time living on acreage as you or I is going to feel claustrophobic in any concrete jungle? I observe in myself, an increased level of tension as a consequence of needing to head for the big smoke.

One notes as population numbers increase, so does the crime rate and mental health issues as raw numbers. We humans are basically tribal and city life is a relatively recent development.

Not uncommon are tales of old folk, lying dead in an apartment, surrounded by so called neighbors/the strangers nextdoor, who only notice her passing, when the unmistakable smell notifies the nose, that a corpse has replaced the old dear that used to live there!

That said, I have a daughter that feels parris is her spiritual home. Needless to say, her experiences don't include being mown down by a nutter driving a truck or being used as target practise by any of those nut jobs at war with the world.

That said, I see nothing in France we don't have or do better, including medal winning wine, except say, cramming more folks into smaller spaces?

Recently, a baby sardine, swimming alongside his mummy out from surfers, pointed a fin and said, look mum, tinned people.
Cheers, Alan B.

Easy answer NO, with over 750 no go zones in France only a moron would want that here.

If you pack the people into small areas trouble follows in the form of criminal gangs.

Alan it will horrify the greenies, but I felt hemmed in & oppressed in New Guinea. My high school years were in the Riverina, where there is plenty of open space & large vistas. Lots of open grass land & space. Even the orchards are low rise greenery.

In New Guinea, except when at sea, you could rarely see more than a hundred yards or so, except in a coconut plantation, which still had real limitations. I longed for a real vista, where I could see a thousand acres or so, from a hilltop.

I once drove from Lae to Madang, through the PNG highlands. The road climbed up the side of the Markham valley. I tried to actually see out over the valley, but could not find a place where you could see past the trees, before you fell off the edge, through the trees, into the valley.

I couldn't find the land for the trees, but in Paris I expect it will be like London, where you can't see the trees for the people.

Horrible.