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The Forum > Article Comments > Cities can still grow without getting us stuck in traffic > Comments

Cities can still grow without getting us stuck in traffic : Comments

By Vladimir Vinokurov, published 23/4/2018

Governments have a long history of spending billions to knowingly build ‘roads to nowhere’ when they could have built efficient infrastructure instead.

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Cities can still grow!? Like, say Manilla where peak hour is 24 hours and traffic is a rolling permanent traffic jam! Yes, there's a case for moving employment to the new centres and suburbs, rather than building roads to allow those who cannot afford inner city prices and are forced to commute. We already have the highest median house prices in the English speaking world? And the author would force them even higher by building our cities higher and removing quality of life green space and mixing commercial precincts with residential development? What? Not enough crime in our cities. Our major development is largely limited to coastal areas or the diminishing green belt, because of sheer unadulterated stupidity! Nothing else. We occupy one of the largest land masses in the world with one of the smallest populations. Most of them concentrated and condensed on our most arable land. Where infrastructure follows forced population growth! Our economy reliant on commodities and temporary residents! We are price takers who refuse to progress! But like South Australia with a wait and see as our multinational manufacturing entities abandon all who live here. Simply put we cannot all be door openers, nor price takers dependant on the whim and caprice of the buyer as we plummet towards the lowest common denominator. Something the writer and city planners so adroitly ignore as they fail to understand the reasons why ordinary folk are already priced out of the inner city. More to follow. Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 23 April 2018 9:58:37 AM
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Eventually, most of our coastal development will be inundated by rising water unless man-made climate change is address by the entire world. And with it 70% of our economy. As always, we are rabbits caught in the glare of the headlights when any self-determined progress is envisioned. Aned as always we find all the reasons it can't or won't be done. With sovereign risk by foreign investors front and centre as our growth and the economy stalls for want of a sane plan and vision. We are shackled to coal now owned by everybody else and a few lickle spit (Benedict Arnold) lackies. Growth and decentralisation, entirely dependant on affordable energy. And without question, nuclear energy! As MSR thorium. And either as public sovietized or cooperative capitalism provided amenity. Afer energy costing as little as 2 cents per KwH. we need affordable desalination and cheap enough to enable us to water our desert heartland. And that is deionization dialysis desalination. Put those two together and we can build from the ground up, virtually anywhere we chose new cities with their own CBD's and industrial estates and surrounded by very acceptable and planned urban sprawl with backyards big enough for normally housebound kids to get out and play. And connected by very rapid rail. Yes, we can afford to do it all, just not with the present self-limiting foreign managed and permitted economy! Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 23 April 2018 10:26:55 AM
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Cities have all but outlived their useful lives as centres of business and commerce, thanks to the world wide web and the fibre to the home, NBN. Nor are the next generation served by cramped apartment lifestyles, when they should be outside playing children's game and learning rudimentary social skills! As for building ever higher. We haven't fully utilised what's under our cities to move volumes of congestion to and fro, should that serve us better than decentralization? We need VLT very rapid rail and desalination to make the cities of tomorrow livable? We have a super fund now somewhere north of two trillion and given the right vehicle, could not only see it return to these shores and long overdue Australian nation-building projects and decentralization! But leverage another lay two trillion hoarded in corporate coffers. That vehicle is, self-terminating thirty year, tax-free, investment bonds. And just what we need to attract all the self-funded cashed up, retirees we can cater to and for. Better two million of them adding their personal fortunes to our economy than the same number of tourists students and temporary workers. Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago. The only thing preventing this essential progress and vision is the incumbent pollies, who must be all removed if we would remove the shackles of the foreign entities (they serve) whose needs and sovereign risk seem to take priority over those of Australia and Australians? Apologies for that lack of paragraphs, removed by a third party after I hit the submit button. Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 23 April 2018 2:26:17 PM
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