Thanks for such a good clear description of the stupidity they call planning today, Ross.

Tomws post shows how dictatorial these planners have become, & how wrong headed. Don't you realise they are the font of all that's godly & green in planning, & nothing is going to change them? The arrogance of telling us he wants to make Canberra even worse than it is now, is typical of the breed.

Has anyone else noticed a real similarity in attitude between urban planners & the global warming scam promoters? I wonder which group is admiringly copying the other.

Unfortunately Yuyutsu comes far too close to the bone, with his comment. We have been hearing this bullsh1t about service industries being the way of the future for quite some time. Well it appears we can't get "service" jobs going in the private sector, so we will now employ the useless in the public sector.

I wonder how long before we, in an effort to get more off the dole queues, will start employing garbage inspectors enabled to issue fines, if we have not sorted our garbage as dictated to a number of bins. Don't laugh, they are doing it in pommy land, one of the places our planners like to copy.

The thing I wonder about is the supposed new thinking about the new tram line - it was supposed to include a betterment recovery element but all I can find if governmental subsidy. When, pray, will be have a match between community planning, central planning, community willingness to pay, and community inability to escape taxation related to bad planning and projects!

The problem with racking, packing, and stacking us in at higher densities is that people didn’t evolve as hive animals, unlike ants or naked mole rats. There are many of us who don’t cope well with crowding, noise, pollution, being cut off from nature, and all the other joys of urban living. The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index happiness surveys have repeatedly found that people are happier at lower densities, even if they have less money.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/welcome-to-the-angstridden-inner-west/2006/02/12/1139679480760.html

As described in the Guardian article below, people living at high densities have 21% more anxiety disorders, 39% more mood disorders, and double the incidence of schizophrenia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/22/city-living-afffects-brain

Here is a link to the original paper from Nature

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7352/full/nature10190.html

High density is particularly bad for children. Parents come under intense pressure to keep them quiet, so there is a strong temptation to keep them pacified with television, computer games, and bowls of junk food. There is usually no place for them to play outside without constant adult supervision. Even if a complex does have a playground, there is no way that parents can exclude bullies as they could from a private garden. Prof. Bill Randolph has found that high density definitely has negative effects on children’s physical and social development

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/planners-warned-of-clumsy-generation/2006/12/05/1165080945270.html

Rearing children under such conditions is so aversive that demographer Joel Kotkin has called high density a more effective method to bring down fertility rates than China’s one child policy.

http://www.news.com.au/money/property/sydneys-dense-housing-a-threat-to-fertility-rates-warns-joel-kotkin/story-e6frfmd0-1226135327168

http://www.propertyoz.com.au/Profiles/ProfileDetail.aspx?pid=55

This might be considered a feature, not a bug, in grossly overpopulated European and East Asian countries, but in country with high immigration, it simply means ethnic replacement.

Hasbeen wrote 28 November 2011 1:12:00 PM:

> Tomws post shows how dictatorial these planners have become, & how wrong headed. ...

I am not a planner, just a citizen expressing my view on how the city I live in should be.

> Has anyone else noticed a real similarity in attitude between urban planners & the global warming scam promoters? I wonder which group is admiringly copying the other.

It is likely that there is more acceptance of climate change by planners, as they receive some training in environmental matters.

It happens I do teach the estimation and reduction of carbon emissions, but for computer people, not town planners: http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/

Excellent piece Ross,

It seems there is a one way street with these regulatory issues. Once in we never see them removed. This is in spite of all the material like that which you assemble for Queensland that demonstrates no improvement in achieving the planning goals while there are lots of additional costs and callous overrides of consumer wishes.

Four years ago I published a study on the Sunshine Coast which concluded
• Home prices on the Sunshine Coast have escalated markedly in recent years. International assessment of housing affordability highlights that the region was the seventh least affordable area of the 227 markets analysed;
• While some suggest that demand is the prime cause of housing price increases along with higher construction costs, analysis shows that land prices are the fundamental drivers of the price increases;
• The Sunshine Coast has a potentially large availability of land for housing, but government regulations have restricted this, and, together with high taxes, have brought escalating land costs;
• Building regulations are also a contributor to rising house costs, but are a secondary influence;
• With the new Sunshine Coast Regional Council coming into existence in 2008, it is possible for a more regional focus to be given to housing affordability issues and in particular to its real underlying cause - regulatory measures, compounded by excessive taxation.

Nothing, of course, improved. The laws just got more intense and the costs of land, for which there is unlimited availability just got progressively dearer as the state and city conspired to reduce its availability.

Alan Moran