Pelican

I agree with the points that you and Cornflower have raised.

Can't help myself, but have to point out the importance of a comma.

"No god will save me."

or

"No, god will save me."

Maybe I'm being a pedant, but I had to read your post twice to be sure of the meaning.

@Cornflower

Yes, Rudd is a complete fool to believe in a big population, however the alternative (Liberal Party) are no different - for 11 years Howard was bending over for big business and bigger population - the baby bonus started with him, do you believe that Abbott is concerned about a sustainable economy for Australia? If not, what is the solution when our leaders don't either see or acknowledge that continual growth is unsupportable?

Gosh you are write Severin. I was thinking the comma in my head but it did not transfer into the fingers. Changes the meaning completely. :(

I wonder if Graham Y is able to change it for ease of reading.

..and I typed 'write' instead of 'right'. Aaaaargh... must stop trying to multi-task.

Pelican

Many is the time I wish I could edit something I have posted. Despite rereading my comments before posting, I continue to make mistakes.

No god can save me from being human.

;)

Ross, you make good points about the confusion between 'sprawl' and orderly, contiguous urban development. But I think you've also overcooked your argument somewhat by resorting to a couple of urban myths.

First, it's simply false that urban growth boundaries create land shortages that push up the price of houses. Melbourne has had an urban growth boundary since 2002, yet the National Housing Supply Council finds that in Victoria there has actually been an oversupply of housing, that only turned into a shortage in 2008 when the GFC squeezed project finance. The fastest rise in Melbourne house prices occurred between 1996 and 2001, at a time when the Kennett Government was promoting genuine 'urban sprawl' - putting new subdivisions USA-style in rural locations remote from existing urban areas and facilities.

Blaming a shortage of residential-zoned land for house price rises also misconstrues the way the industry operates: developers buy up greenfield land in residential zones and then release it for construction on a timeline set to maximise return on investment. Again, there may be a shortage of houses in parts of Melbourne but there is no shortage of empty residential-zoned land.

The ACF Consumption Atlas is also frequently misunderstood. This used an economic input-output analysis to trace all consumption, not just energy use. Not surprisingly, it found that wealthy inner-urban dwellers have a higher footprint because they spend more money. But the methodology also relies on questionable assumptions, such as that a steak that costs $30 at a restaurant has 6 times the footprint of the same steak bought for $5 and cooked at home with $1 worth of electricity.

You can make a perfectly good argument for developing urban areas along roughly traditional lines just by noting the lack of reasons not to. As long as development proceeds along well-defined corridors that avoid high-value rural land, and infrastructure such as public transport is provided ahead of people moving in, the only compelling argument people have made for high densities is that this is supposedly required in order to boost public transport use - the argument Mees has comprehensively demolished.

Yep, nothing wrong with sprawl, but non urban would be better.

The announcement today of 3 areas, chosen for satellite cities, one only a few Km from me would be improved by a couple of things.

1/ Move them further out, [& away from me]. One of the reasons much of Melbourne works is that, with that great bay, spliting iy up, it is like a series of self contained cities, with work play & home all in a confined area.

2/ Announce the start of construction of the electric railway line to service these cities.

3/ Announce that the government will take up 10% of the new area for public service offices, & thus reduce the number of them traveling into city high rise offices every day.

4/ Announce the other initiatives, & light industrial develoments, in conjunction with the residential, so the residents can find work right there, & not in the Brisbane CBD.

In today's world, there is no reason for CBDs to even exist. With them eliminated or much deminished, there would be no need for the huge traffic flow into them each day, which causes so much trouble.