This article is just plain weeeird!!

Now let me see if I’ve got it right:

Congestion is a major bug-bear in our cities. It is getting worse. It is caused by continuous population growth - not entirely but this is certainly the biggest factor.

Nothing we can do by way of new roads, encouraging public transport, etc, is likely to make much of a difference. So the biggest thing we can do to stop it getting steadily worse is to quell population growth.

Oh hold on, no….the article doesn’t suggest that! In fact it suggests that population growth is innately good, in fact so innately good that no justification is needed.

So we should look at congestion, and when we are sitting in traffic clog-down, we should think to ourselves;

‘Hey, this isn’t too bad – it is a sign of rapid population growth, and Mr Elliott says that this is a very good thing, and that’s all that really matters. In fact, we should celebrate our congested roads as a sign of a dynamic city, because apparently the only alternative to a congested city is a dying city!

‘We should no longer complain about congestion – we have more serious things to worry about.

‘Like um….the ever-rising prices of everything, while at the same time we are being told that we have a mining boom and really healthy economic growth. Where’s this economic growth at the personal level?

‘And um, our once-off mineral resources are being dug up as rapidly as possible. And it would seem that the wealth being generated from this can’t even keep up with providing all the necessities for our enormous immigration intake, let alone maintain all the basic services and infrastructure for the existing population.

‘And our environment is becoming more degraded.

‘And Gillard is talking about a sustainable Australia, but she is clearly not taking us in that direction, in fact are powering off in the opposite direction!

‘And so on and so on.

continued

‘Gee….I wonder….could it be……….. Could possibly it be that Mr Elliott’s worship of high and continuous population growth is in fact the primary cause of all these woes and that he is seriously wrong about this?

‘But he is such a guru on the subject of growth and urban planning and policy!

‘No….hold on…. he said that there is no planning that can really tackle congestion. Maybe he’s not such an urban policy guru afterall…………….and I’m strongly getting the feeling that he is seriously not a guru when it comes to population growth!

‘No…..the more I think about it, as I sit here in my car in traffic clog-down in Sydney, is that he is completely and wildly off the rails about this’

Ludwig,

Instead of jumping on your usual bandwagon and slagging off about population growth and our “enormous immigration intake” being responsible for just about every conceivable problem, you might like to address the issue at hand and actually offer something worthwhile – like a suggestion or two (no matter how outlandish) of how to fix the problem.

I agree that the article offers little itself by way of a solution, but it is posted here to inspire discussion by those who are able, for a nanosecond, to think outside the box and suggest any kind of solution to our congestion issues.

For instance, I live in Victoria and I would like to see – for a start – investment (by government NOT private enterprise) in proper, fast-ferry water transport around the bay. I would like to see mandatory light rail accompanying every new highway and tollway. Better that than all the ridiculous sculptures that have been installed along the Eastlink, at great and unnecessary expense. I want to see bullet trains operating between states and cities (God knows they manage it in other countries). I would like to see local governments using our ridiculously high rates to supply free, effective transport for every school age child in their area, to any school within their area. I would like to see public transport concessions honoured by every state, regardless of state of issue. Then I would like to see a stop to cars being claimed as salary sacrifice.

Every city and state has its problems. Every city and state needs to offer a solution. The question is: are we seven countries, or one?

There are any number of alternatives to what we have now. But the biggest hurdle that needs addressing, before any real change can be brought about, is the lack of cooperation between all states, and between state and federal governments. The second biggest is to draw to a close our eagerness to embrace privatization of what should be public assets.

Crikey Scribbler. I’m making a totally valid point.

Yes I make this sort of point often on this forum. Now I wonder why that might be? Perhaps it is because population growth is the elephant in the living room that keeps getting left out of articles in which it should play a very prominent part.

<< ….offer something worthwhile – like a suggestion or two… of how to fix the problem. >>

Erm… there IS a suggestion inherent in my comments: stop population growth, or at least slow it right down. How did you miss that?

So, instead of thinking about every little thing that we might be able to do to alleviate congestion, how about thinking about the really big factors first?

It makes completely no sense for you to be tinkering around the edges while ignoring or refusing to tackle the MAIN PROBLEM here!

For as long as we have high and continuous population growth in our cities, we will have chronic congestion, amongst many other negative factors, no matter what we try to do about it.

Hasn’t this been proven? All the new freeways, toll roads, bridges, tunnels, attempts to get people onto busses and bicycles, etc, hasn’t worked! In fact all it has done is actually facilitate continuous population growth and congestion. The best that can be said about it is that it has allowed us to have quite massive population growth in Sydney, Melbourne, etc without it absolutely clogging us down!

I really think you’re being very wrong-headed in the way you are thinking about this.

I actually thought Ross was going to touch the answer when he said 90% of jobs are actually not in the CBD, but like all these planners, he then missed. He even admitted just how inefficient public transport is, except for CBD commuters.

Well mate, the answer is scrub the public transport, just after you scrub the CBD.

He almost touches the fact that most CBD workers are public servants, & the retailers that cater to their personal shopping requirements.

Move the public service out of the city, there is no logical reason for sop many to be there today, & much of the retail will follow them. Spread them in a dozen different locations, & the CBD generated congestion is a thing of the past.

Not only do we save billions in road building & public transport subsidies, especially for public servants, you have piles of high rise office space to convert to apartments. Thus we could get all the greenies, or inner city chattering class if you like, in one place, & that the least green in every state. Ironic hay.

We could save a few offices especially for the planners. Working there might just remind them that we are not all Copenhagen, when they start their modern dreaming.

Now that would be a major change.

Well, it a bit like failure to launch, a sort of half whacked comedy, about an adult male, who simply couldn't or would leave his parents house, even when he clearly had all the material elements, that enabled him to fully grasp his very overdue independence!
Capital city congestion is simply a failure to decentralise!
Which parenthetically, really only serves ultra greedy landlords and inner-city redevelopers. [Sydney is arguably, now the most expensive capital city in the world?]
Very rapid rail, [350kph +,] and the decentralisation it would and should produce, if planned sensibly, is the answer.
Rapid rail could almost fund itself, if some of the resumed land near planned station stops, were subdivided by the procuring authority, and sold off later, as relativity low cost urban land!
Land adjacent to the most convenient, low cost, lowest carbon emitting, WI FI equipped, public transport option ever envisioned, would be snapped up!
Moreover, it would allow commuters to use the travel time productively, to study or do online business etc/etc!
And arrive cool calm and collected, and vastly more productive and or forgiving, as a consequence!
Should these new towns or cities, be planned as fully self contained, with their own CBD and industrial estates; self sufficient power and water supplies, they would encourage an unstoppable mass migration!
A migration that would boost state economies, and local manufacture, all while emptying out capital cities to the point, where any new city central infrastructure spending, could be largely eliminated; and or, replaced by essential maintenance only!
Rhrosty.

Ludwig,

I am not denying we have an increasing population. However, it is miniscule compared to many other countries, all of whom have amazing transport infrastructure that actually works. Of course, the downside is that smaller population = less income tax revenue. But it's not the number of people that is the problem. It is how they are managed and moved. In essence, it is a logistical problem, not one of density.

The reason we have such appalling public transport in this country is because Federal and state expenditure amounts to a paltry 5%! ($26bn out of S484.5bn in 2010/11) Just 5% of ALL government revenue is spent on roads, rail, water, air and transport communications. A truly appalling figure. It is no wonder we are sitting, exasperated and angry, in ever increasing traffic jams. It is no wonder this country is, quite literally, grinding to a halt.

If you have to blame the government (and please don’t isolate a single party, as all successive governments are guilty of not investing in infrastructure – indeed, under Howard, they positively divested themselves of it) then blame their poor planning, inadequate foresight, irrational moves to privatize public assets, and mismanagement and misdirection of funds. Blame governments incapable of real taxation reform that could see increased spending in those areas most in need.

Yes, increased population leads to increasing burdens on transport infrastructure (and other social services too), but when the system is so woefully planned and executed from the get-go, with no foresight beyond the next election, it is more the fault of government than of the users. And when the numbers are as low as they are in comparison to other countries who all seem to manage with a far greater influx of migrants, your argument doesn’t stack up.

Hasbeen is exactly right. A disproportionate amount of activity that occurs in CBD’s is rent-seeking, parasitical, wealth-transfer activity in the economy. Most of the wealth CREATION occurs elsewhere in the economy.
Congestion is minimised by three things. One, dispersion of employment and jobs-housing balance. Two; road capacity. Three; an urban land price curve that does not “price out” households from locations where they might find jobs and amenities. Modern urban planning fetishes get all three counts wrong. They attempt to plan everything around “centralisation”. They under-invest in road capacity for inter-nodal travel which is where 90% plus of travel is occurring (radial CBD-focused highways are almost as much a waste of time as radial-focused rail). And they force up the price of housing so much that young first home buyers end up commuting from 60 miles away in the Styx, which is the only place they can afford a home. It is, by the way, a flat lie from the utopian planning people, that these households could “save more money on transport than what it would cost them to buy a home closer to work”

Rhrosty’s comment is interesting too. I have seen this as the potential for Mag-Lev if it ever got off the ground commercially. Massive “Mag-Lev-based sprawl”.
But there is an inherent problem with development based around a fixed route transport mode. That is, the uplift in price of the land that is expected by the property owners along the route. Advocates of any rail based transport “investments” are economic illiterates if their proposal does not also include the compulsory acquisition of land, even when this land is already-valuable CBD land. Or worse, they are corrupt cronies of the land owners along the route they are advocating.
It was common knowledge a few decades ago, that automobile based development minimised “economic rent” rather than maximised it like fixed route modes, because it has so many entry and exit points. The train cannot come anywhere near to a fraction as many front doors as private cars come to. For example, read Robert Murray Haig’s works from the 1920’s, or even Frank Lloyd Wright’s various famous essays on urban design.
Rapid Bus Transit is a compromise, but Curitiba's famous example worked OK initially BECAUSE the land for the surrounding "Transit Oriented Development" was NATIONALISED. So of course the housing was "affordable" because there wasn't several hundred thousand dollars per acre of "planning gain" built into the cost.

As for this Ludwig guy, what is his "final solution"? Not that the "population growth" thing is a problem, doomsayers have always been predicting economic and ecological collapse; at 100 million population; at 1 billion; at 3 billion, and so on ad nauseum. Colin Clark, Julian Simon, Bjorn Lomborg, Matt Ridley and George Reisman are the voices of reason on this, the more extreme environmentalists are basically a reversion to the unreason of pre-enlightment, pre-Christian, nature-worshipping paganism.

Ross Elliott is right that an increase in population within a given area will involve an increase in traffic from most of the new people using cars, BUT there is ALSO an exponential effect on congestion, because roads that were once free-flowing at certain times of the day, become “stop-start” instead – and this condition actually involves fewer cars getting through that road during the relevant time frame. This means that “rush hour” has to lengthen out by a lot more than what the increase in numbers of cars alone would have suggested.
Worse, the “reduction in travel distances” that results from increased housing density, is nowhere near linear. “Housing” is always less than half of an urban area anyway. In fact the doubling of population on the 30% to 40% of an urban area that actually typically is “housing”, places pressure on the “public” land that is part of the remaining 60% to 70% (along with commercial land). Schools, parks, hospitals, public buildings, space for infrastructure and rights-of-way. The expansion of public facilities and the provision of more compensating “green space” in the same urban footprint negates the effect of increased housing density on the total urban footprint. The public needs to understand that halving their private living space, does NOT halve travel distances. Authoritative calculations show a reduction of 5-7%.

The iron law of urban density and transport is: increased urban density results in only fractional-linear reductions in trip distance, but congestion increases exponentially; and the net outcome is ALWAYS WORSE for trip times and is a NEGATIVE INPUT to resource consumption and emissions. The fact that transport resource consumption and emissions might show a relationship with density as claimed by Newman et al, is almost certainly via the mechanism of reductions in household discretionary incomes as a result of inflated housing costs. Other “discretionary spending after housing costs” is reduced as well: education, health, hobbies, food, clothing, etc; household formation and childbearing will also be lower in the cities with higher density and higher housing costs - this being the inevitable legacy of urban planning

RE assumes that as “a city that grows is bound to experience more congestion”. And ‘more people will equal more congestion”.

Not necessarily.

Perhaps Hasbeen is right on the money when he suggests moving workers out of the CBD. After all why so many white collared professionals eek out a living downtown stupefies many. Haven’t they - or their bosses - heard of FB? Email? Twitter? And for those oft tossed arguments that they “need to meet others face to face and that's best achieved if we're in the city”, can’t they cab it from the suburbs when required?

Moving city based workers into the suburbs will not only revitalise secondary CBDs, but more and more city office buildings will be available for letting downtown to those who really need to be there. And with competition for space falling so would the rent.

I do agree with many that taxing users of motor vehicles when public transport is poor is unfair. And certainly regressive in many cases. Irrespective of how it is dressed, a congestion tax, car rego, tolls etc are plain taxes that aim at behaviour modification of drivers but will mostly just make them poorer as they will keep driving their cars in the absence of a radical mass transit overhaul.

In order to entice customers to use mass transit rather than tax their use of the car, how about encouraging staggered working hours?

How about trialling free mass transit first in off peak hours then in peak hours?

How about bringing an end to the building of new roads and new tollways and instead spend big time on improving mass transit?

How about comprehensively study if future home owners are one person households, 2 person or families?

How about studying if such households really want to live in far flung suburbs on a big pile of dirt or whether they prefer small inner city abodes.

Surely such matters must be investigated at length and recommendations (with the best data available at the time) made before any urban transport strategy is green-lighted.

Philip from NZ is so wrong that it is hard to know where to start. He takes a tiny slice of human history and assumes that it is typical, but numerous past societies in the historical and archaeological records collapsed due to overpopulation and overexploitation of the environment, or only maintained some sort of balance due to attrition from unending tribal warfare. As just one example, this is what Prof. David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington) says about the collapse of the Sumerian city states in his "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations (p. 39):

"Preventing the buildup of salt in semiarid soils requires either irrigating in moderation or periodically leaving fields fallow. In Mesopotamia, centuries of high productivity from irrigated land led to increased population density that fueled demand for more intensive irrigation. Eventually, enough salt crystallized in the soil that further increases in agricultural productivity were not enough to feed the growing population."

Yes, we got lucky with the Green Revolution, which is why Ehrlich et al., being unable to predict its success, were wrong about famines in the 1970s, but it is just foolish optimism to imagine that we can go on pulling technological rabbits out of the hat and ignoring our growing global environmental problems, world without end. Even Norman Borlaugh, the "father of the Green Revolution" often said that he was only buying time to stop population growth (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech). For Julian Simon's hopelessness with mathematics and the hopelessness of Cornucopian thinking generally, see this review of his book by economist Herman Daly

http://www.mnforsustain.org/daly_h_simon_ultimate_resource_review.htm

(cont'd)

(cont'd)

So far as infrastructure is concerned, it is the rate of population growth that matters, not the particular number of additional people, because it determines the percentage increase of infrastructure spending that is required. 2% population growth requires that it be doubled, assuming an average infrastructure lifetime of 50 years. Each new migrant immediately requires $200,000 to $400,000 worth of infrastucture, mostly from the public purse (according to Labor MP Kelvin Thomson) - roads, schools, power lines and power plants,dams, ports, sewers, hospitals, etc., etc., but it is likely to be decades before he has contributed enough to pay for his share. Infrastructure Australia has estimated that we already have a $770 billion infrastructure backlog.

I would like to see decentralisation too, and it would certainly defuse a lot of the anger, but the government has no doubt already looked at it and decided that it can't afford it. Borrowing the money to fix the infrastructure problems would require cutting down on population growth in the future to allow the loans to be repaid. Taxation at the necessary level would provoke a revolt. The government is already taking a bigger share of GDP than it did in the 1970s when tertiary education was free and the aged pension wasn't means tested. Ludwig was right about the main source of the problem. although there are no doubt also examples of poor planning.

The question is: are we seven countries, or one?
scribbler,
if federal Labor gets in again we won't be a country at all let alone seven. We'll just be contractors to China or any other mob which wave a fistful of Dollars at what they call a Government.

Scribbler, you wrote:

<< Of course, the downside is that smaller population = less income tax revenue. >>

We are never going to have a smaller population. What we might get, with the right sort of government strategy, is a considerably lower rate of growth which eventually reaches a stable population many years down the track.

So we are not going to get less tax revenue.

What we would get is less demand for the taxpayer dollars to be spent on services, infrastructure and everything else that a rapidly increasing population degrades, and hence a much better ability to make our taxes to really count for something in terms of real quality-of-life improvements.

<< But it's not the number of people that is the problem. It is how they are managed and moved. In essence, it is a logistical problem, not one of density. >>

I totally disagree. It is very much both. And the number of people and rate of growth sits right at the core of logistics and planning. If a government can’t plan properly to cater for this without it causing significant negative factors for the existing community, then they are being critically irresponsible if they keep up the same population growth rate.

They can’t plan properly for it. And they ARE being critically irresponsible….big time!!

I find it absolutely amazing that you are very critical of government planning and yet not at all critical of them for upholding ever-increasing population pressure on exactly the services and infrastructure that they can’t get into proper order! This really makes no sense at all.

Surely the most obvious thing to do is to stop heaping on the pressure! Stop or greatly slow the immigration rate so that the myriad of problems cause or exacerbated by population pressure can be fixed. Then maybe we can increase immigration somewhat again.

Ludwig,

My comment about smaller population = less tax revenue was in comparison to other, more populated countries. Not for an instance was I saying that Australia’s population would decrease. I think you read it out of context, or I did not make it clear.

You will not stop the pressure of increasing population, Ludwig, no matter how you might want to. Whether it is because of international agreements leading to increased immigration or our own population expanding with higher birthrates, etc, population will always increase (except, of course, in the event of a major epidemic or catastrophe). I agree the rate at which it increases can be influenced by government policy but, again, it is not as black and white as high numbers vs. low numbers.

My point is that the infrastructure we have and have put up with for so long is woefully inadequate and has been for some time. It is not the number of immigrants who make this worse. It is the fact that we are buying and installing already outdated systems from discarded overseas models, we are not thinking outside the square when it comes to urban planning and transport. How is it that cities like Tokyo, London, New York and any number of European cities all manage to provide not just adequate (well, maybe in Tokyo) but superior transport for their citizens, accommodating far larger numbers than you are touting? It is not just because they have underground systems – that is merely an excuse put forward by us. It is because they adequately planned for future generations - unlike our policy makers who plan for the next decade, knowing that after that it will no longer be their problem. It is also because many of the workable systems are owned and operated by governments rather than private enterprise.

This thread is about congestion. Congestion is caused by many factors. Over population is just one of them – it is not the main contributor. This is where our views differ, and I suggest we agree to do so.

<< This thread is about congestion. Congestion is caused by many factors. Over population is just one of them – it is not the main contributor >>

Scribbler, YES population is one of them, and it is a big one, if not the main factor.

You acknowledge that is a factor and yet you wish to do nothing about it. You are happy to address anything else at all that might help, but you won’t even consider lowering the population growth rate at all. Sorry, but this is just completely nonsensical!

Ok, so you reckon our planners could do a whole lot better. Well, I’m not so sure about that, given how comprehensively our cities are built around road transport and how much Australians love their cars.

Hey, no expense has been spared in recent decades to build new roads and to try and implement rail, bus and cycleway components, as well as to decentralise, encourage working from home, etc.

Given the amount of protest from the general community about city congestion and the political ramifications of this, I would say that our politicians and their associated urban planners have pretty well done their damnedest to deal with the issue. And they’ve failed!

continued

I’m not sure that there are any overseas successes that would work really well in the Australian situation and lead to large-scale improvements.

If there are and if they are they do get implemented, they will in all probability be compromised somewhat, or cancelled out or completely overwhelmed by continuous rapid population growth, before too long!

In other words; they won’t lead to significant improvements at all.

If we are to effectively address city congestion, we have simply got to deal with the ever-increasing pressure on our roads and other transport mechanisms at the same time that we improve public transport and all the other alternatives to driving to and from work in the city every day.

<< You will not stop the pressure of increasing population, Ludwig, no matter how you might want to. >>

There is no reason why we couldn’t have a stable population if the political will was there. And we wouldn’t need to tamper with our birthrate at all, other than to get rid of the despicable baby bonus.

And we could very easily greatly reduce the growth rate.

Now, if only Gillard would stick to her convictions to achieve sustainable Australia, and listen to her colleagues Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson in this regard, we’d be on the right track to achieving a stable population… and effectively dealing with city congestion, as well as a host of other huge issues.

Scribbler, you should not resign yourself to never-ending population growth.

Scribbler,

Population growth, apart from a few hundred thousand total due to demographic momentum, is not inevitable, even if the population boosters would like you to believe that it is. A number of European and East Asian countries either have extremely low population growth (0.065% annually for Finland) or actually have declining populations, such as Japan and Germany. These countries are performing very well economically (according to the World Economic Forum) and rank high on the UN Human Development Index. They also have far fewer problems than we do with overstretched and crumbling infrastructure and public services. The real basket case countries are the ones with very high population growth.

According to the ABS, 57% of our population growth is due to net overseas migration, entirely a matter of government policy. 43% is due to natural increase, but the immigration adds mightily to that as well because migrants have children just like everyone else. Half the population of New South Wales has at least one parent born overseas. With zero net immigration (perhaps 80,000 migrants a year), we would most likely get a few hundred thousand more people due to demographic momentum, but the Australian fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976, so it wouldn't amount to much more than that.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0.

Any of the changes you advocate would simply be swamped by more and more people, if we can't rein in our politicians. It is like Julia Gillard's silly carbon tax, the benefits of which have been more than cancelled out by expanded coal exports and population growth. According to the Australia Institute, the average migrant doubles his or her greenhouse gas emissions by coming to Australia. More consumption is precisely why most people emigrate.

Ludwig,

Oh dear, I am obviously not making myself clear, my apologies. I am not resigned to ever increasing population growth.

Let's tackle this from another perspective: suppose, for sake of argument, our population remained stable at current levels for the next ten years. As our current infrastructure is already inadequate and cannot cope with current levels, what improvements or changes or plans would you suggest or like to see implemented?

Obviously, from your POV this is purely hypothetical, but I would be interested to see if you have anything to offer to improve our transportation crisis across the country other than calling for a stop to immigration.

That was my original point. I hope this time I have managed to make it more clear. :)

“Divergence”, primitive civilisations had their own problems that we do not; so do, even today, cultures and political systems that are inimical to progress. Matt Ridley, “The Rational Optimist” says that the greatest threat to humanity today is political self-fulfilling prophecies. Economically illiterate “Green” governments would ruin civilisation with unintended consequences just as economically illiterate Communist ones promised to OUT-PRODUCE capitalism, as well as make everyone equal – and failed miserably. “Green” government would similarly have exactly the opposite effect on environmental outcomes as it claims to want. The Kyoto Protocol has already resulted in a reversal of the centuries-long natural trend to de-carbonisation in the world economy. Refer “The Wrong Trousers: Radically rethinking Climate Policy” by Gwyn Prins and John Rayner.
Herman Daly, in his so-called “rebuttal” of Julian Simon, completely misses the distinction between “finite” and “vast”. This is why Julian Simon has always been proved right. Matt Ridley says that the resource doomsayers are like people going yachting off the coast of Ireland and worrying they might run aground on Newfoundland, because after all, the Atlantic Ocean is “finite”.
Daly actually attempts to elide the point that pollution decreases as economies develop. I can recommend many sources of information on this, but try the annual “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators” by Steven Hayward.
The very subject we are discussing on this thread, congestion, is riddled with “unintended consequences” of economically illiterate “Green” ideology. Trip-to-work times have steadily risen everywhere in the world that planning has aimed at urban intensification and diverting road spending to public transport.
The US cities where employment has decentralised the most rapidly, are the ones where trip-to-work times have remained the most stable. These cities generally are the ones with the least regulatory interference in urban land markets, and they happen to have very affordable housing along with low urban density and large average space per household. (Cont......)

Whilst aware that I'm setting myself up for howls of derision, I'll jump on in anyway (you'd think I'd have better sense).

Decentralisation! It really is so stupid for the greater majority of Australians to live in densely populated urban sprawls. I left it behind six years ago and I don't anticipate going back, except for visits and occassional business.

So how could this move out be inspired to become a trend?

Simple. Governments tax corporations/companies in cities for congestion and high infrastructure and at the same time handout incentives for company developments in regional areas. I believe some sort of sentiment like this is has actually been sprouted by Gillard & Co just recently. But this of course will create vote distribution problems and is politically dangerous. I don't expect them to do anything serious about it.

So, I guess city Aussies will just stay in their rat-holes and continue to think they live in Brussels, Stockholm or Paris. Nobody really wants to change. People must be happy living in congestion otherwise they'd make the move out like I did.

Cheers.

(Cont…..) In contrast, the cities with prescriptive growth-containment planning suffer from the worst of all worlds; unaffordable housing in spite of much higher average density in new developments; and they have worsening trip-to-work times and worsening local air pollution. The effects Ross Elliott describes, and what I added in my earlier comments, are the reason for this.
Trying to centralise employment just to make mass public transport work, is the ultimate “tail wags dog” fallacy. It is physical determinism gone mad. It is cargo cultism. Urban economies exist in most cases, most of the time, for wealth creation, not the zero-sum transfers and “consumption” that marks high density CBD’s. There are perfectly rational reasons that urban wealth producers who need more space per worker than Goldman Sachs head office, long since got out of Manhattan. It would be only slightly more absurd to expect dairy farming and agriculture to centralise into tall-building CBD’s so their workers, too, can catch trains to work.
I read your Herman Daly recommendation: I recommend to you, “Environmentalism Refuted” by George Reisman.
http://mises.org/daily/661
Why is it more moral to forcibly sterilise women or forcibly abort their foetuses against their will, than to just let people breed if they want to, let progress happen, and let the system balance itself? It worked that way for centuries, before (PART OF) humanity had “the enlightenment” and a technological revolution. Birth rates plummet everywhere that survival rates skyrocket. The increase in population is due to rates of survival, not to increased fecundity.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com
Millions of women over centuries have borne large numbers of children knowing that most of them would probably die before twenty. This has always been an incentive to have more of them, not less. It is absurd for Malthusians to be devoting their propaganda efforts to the modern world where demographics are undergoing a collapse anyway. As if Australia cannot feed several times its current population level……
Hypocritical “secularists” with their cultural relativism, insist on “respect” of non-progressive cultures, then insist on forced population control to ameliorate the lack of progress…..!

The “cost of infrastructure” argument is a smokescreen from corrupt and incompetent local governments who have already betrayed their constituents with rampant waste and “troughing”.
I did not mention immigration in my earlier comments. It is the quality of the immigrants that matters, not the quantity of them. Rampant cultural relativism leads to masses of useless immigrants swamping western economies infrastructure and welfare systems.
Here is the crux regarding the cost of infrastructure. By containing urban growth and forcing up the cost of housing, local government forces every young first home buyer to take on so much excess debt, that the total amount of this additional debt burden across a generation WOULD have paid for a gold-plated infrastructure expansion and renewal had the load been placed directly on young first home buyers for this purpose, by way of a six-figure levy. This would have been electorally impossible, obviously immoral and an inter-generational betrayal. But what HAS happened IS exactly that, even if few people have the gumption to realise it. But it is property investors and the banking sector who have stitched up the lion’s share of the younger generation’s hard-earned future income, not the providers of infrastructure…….!
Our ancestors were not fools for funding infrastructure for growth, out of local taxation revenue paid by everyone. This is simply an inter-generational “fair go”. Forcing up the price of new housing forces up the price of all housing, just as new taxes on new cars would make all used ones suddenly worth more too. This is very nice for everyone except those who buy their first home after the prices were driven up – and this includes “everyone from now on”. But the older generations, who enjoyed a fair go with house prices and a fair go with infrastructure cost sharing, now not only avoid “paying in” for the sake of their descendants, but they reap what the urban expert Prof Robert Bruegmann aptly describes as “the greatest inter-generational wealth transfer in history” in their favour. A society that does this to its young has an utterly broken moral compass.

Here is the real hidden reason that local government wants to “constrain urban growth”. On greenfields, everyone knows where they stand re infrastructure levies: infrastructure is put in, fees are paid. But when “intensification” occurs, local government rocks the fees in to the developer on the grounds that the existing infrastructure is inadequate and must be “expanded”. This is complete and utter fraud. Truth be told, local government has long since failed to fund op-ex, maintenance and renewal, does not want a local tax revolt, and strategically maneuvers developers into the position of being the cash cow by which 100% of these costs can be met without raising taxes. That is, they “double dip” when it comes to infrastructure in existing areas; they charge local taxes for decades, allegedly for the provision and maintenance of infrastructure in perpetuity; AND charge developers for the same costs, fraudulently labelled “capacity expansion”.
The high level of “localisation” of municipal incorporation is a valuable protection, in the USA, against this kind of fraud. And the cost of renewing infrastructure is a major problem in many cities BECAUSE OF excessively high density and extremely poor planning, the cost of access and disruption being prohibitive. Shlomo Angel et al in the recent paper “Making Room for a Planet Full of Cities” make a comprehensive argument for lower urban densities with plenty of space and rights-of-way for cost-effective infrastructure operation, maintenance, renewal and expansion.
The future of western civilisation is “owned” right now by the many US cities with freedom to build, ongoing fringe growth, low density, and affordable housing. The “cost of infrastructure” paradigm is steeply in their favour, along with the competitive advantage of low land costs and the absence of property “investment” Ponzi mania.
Pre-empting the inevitable smear of the “vested interests” of urban fringe developers: their profits, in a genuinely competitive market for urban land, are a miniscule fraction of the completely unearned capital gains when thousands of square kilometres of land within some planners “growth boundary” is inflated in “value” by several hundred percent

<< …suppose, for sake of argument, our population remained stable at current levels for the next ten years. As our current infrastructure is already inadequate and cannot cope with current levels, what improvements or changes or plans would you suggest or like to see implemented? >>

Scribbler, I would think that it would be quite different in different situations and that various combinations of current ideas would help alleviate congestion, to some extent.

New roads, light rail, busses, cycleways, car-pooling, incentives to decentralise or work from home, etc. These could all have some impact, presumably. Although I would guess that it would not be a huge impact in the depths of Sydney or Melbourne.

I don’t know beyond these broad suggestions. I would leave the details to the planners, who can spend their days carefully analysing the exact logistics, costs and benefits.

<< That was my original point. I hope this time I have managed to make it more clear. :) >>

I know! But dare I say it; it is nonsensical if you are just going to ignore the ever-increasing population. Not only nonsensical but it would actually be making the situation worse by facilitating population growth.

It comes down to the very basics of supply and demand. We should never be thinking about just one side of the equation, which is what you are doing here. You want us to debate only the supply side of the transport issue in congested cities and not even think about the demand side. And where the demand is constantly and rapidly increasing, this just completely does not make sense.

Riding the old hobby-horse as hard as ever I see, Ludwig.

>>It comes down to the very basics of supply and demand.<<

This was the aspect of the article under discussion that I found notably absent.

Companies choose to base themselves where it is most economically advantageous for their business. To do otherwise would be terminally stupid. Historically, CBDs have evolved because firms opt to be where the catchment area for staff is widest - that way, they can keep their employment costs under control.

But make no mistake; if it will save them money, they will migrate from the CBD to outlying areas in a heartbeat.

But the dilemma is principally one of "first-mover disadvantage". In order to convince businesses that such a move is advantageous, infrastructure must come first, otherwise the cost benefits will not be readily calculable. Sadly, it requires a "courageous" government in these Eeyore days to take the initiative, and these are as rare as rocking-horse poop.

But it can be done, where supply-and-demand actually work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/realestate/12wczo.html?_r=0

"'Financial companies want to be near the train tracks so they can tap into the young people, who seem to want to live in New York City, and the workers who are older and live in the suburbs,' Mr. Fagan said. 'It gives you the full life cycle.'"

Regrettably, "integrated transport planning" simply does not happen here. NSW's recent attempt to develop a twenty-year plan under previous-premier Nick Greiner shows just how feebly we approach the task.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/nsw-transport-plan-to-take-20-years/story-e6frfku9-1226464345083

The complete absence of innovative thinking, and the blind acceptance that the answer is "more roads", is indicative of the malaise at the heart of every Australian government right now. A built-in preference to do nothing that will remotely jeopardize the chances of re-election. Receptus ignavorum. The coward's retreat.

And no, Ludwig, I am not going to debate the role of population control in this context.

Pericles, you are half right. I recommend an extremely enlightening online short book: "The Flow of Money and Its Impact on Local Economies" by William Fruth.

The simple fact is that strong CBD's are unique to only a few cities, that are sustained by flows of finance sector fee income and bureaucratic income.

It is impossible to multiply indefinitely, the "wealth transfer", "economic rent" based sector of national economies at the expense of the wealth-creating, land-and-resource using sectors; just so you can have strong CBD's everywhere with centralised employment and viable mass public transport systems. As I already said, this is "tail wagging the dog", it is "physical determinism" and it is "cargo cultism".

The US economy is highly productive precisely because it has the balance about right: it only has one "Manhattan" among 260 cities with populations over 500,000. It only NEEDS one. The whole WORLD only needs about 10 so called "global finance" cities.

In so far as "Manhattan" gets "replicated" elsewhere, this has to weaken the original.....! If global finance, law, accounting, advertising, firms decide to locate somewhere else, that is nice for centralisation of employment and/or apartment living in the place they go instead of Manhattan, but it weakens Manhattan in the process. But it would be absurd to expect Manhattan to be replicated in 200 US cities just so mass public transport is viable in all these cities. You can't expect Detroit to manufacture cars in a replica of Manhattan; the garment manufacturers left Manhattan decades ago for good reason; even less-lucrative finance businesses etc are being forced out by high rentals.

Germany has a so called "network of global cities" instead of one primary one, there is an interesting paper on this. But it also has a well balanced economy with plenty of real resource-utilising, wealth creating, value adding export industries, that no-one expects to "Manhattanise". (Cont.....)

(Cont.....) You might as well get all stressed out at the long distances that rural workers commute, and insist that farmers move into multi storey buildings so their workers too can catch trains. This is only slightly less absurd than expecting the entire urban economy in a nation to be based on tall building CBD's. There is a broad spectrum of land requirements in industry types that fall between "global finance" and farming.

It is noticeable that in the UK, the heaviest losses of competitiveness (and eventual shutdown) have been in land intensive urban industries like auto making. This is one of many perverse legacies of their urban planning system. Oliver Hartwich most insightfully commented a few months ago that "finance is the only industry still standing in post-modern Britain". Guess why the UK government is the world's staunchest opposer of "Tobin Taxes"? Guess what would happen to the local economy of London, which gets the biggest finance sector fee income of any city in the world? And what else is there in the UK economy worth writing home about? UK desperately needs a Houston. So does Australia.

Phil, I'm not sure your annalise quite works.

You suggest that the UK's loss of a motor industry was a factor of urban planning & lack of land.

The main problem with that is that today there are more cars manufactured in the UK than at any previous time. The difference is that apart from Morgan, they are all foreign owned, mostly foreign companies with a plant in the UK.

This to me indicates a number of problems, that have nothing to do with land intensive urban industries, & more to do with continual interference in these industries by government. That actually means planners were the very thing that destroyed them.

For many years the government planners tried to use the industry arm of government. As with so much of government planning, they got it wrong, & with militant unionism wanting too many eggs, destroyed the goose.

Foreign industry could tell the government & their planners to go jump. When government tried to get dictatorial, they threatened to leave, & meant it. Not surprisingly, they prospered.

So endeth the lesson, "government help is usually terminal"

This leads to the natural conclusion. If Government planners continue to have too much input into our, & other countries, power industries, we will all soon be living in the dark.

Hasbeen, thanks for your comment. I agree with you about the many reasons for the long decline in the UK automobile industry, that seems to have reversed now. In general, the UK's urban planning system has been inimical to productivity, and especially so in the case of more land intensive industries.

The McKinsey Institute’s 1998 paper, "Driving Productivity and Growth in the UK economy" was a landmark of analysis.

Urban economist Alan W. Evans expanded on the findings of this, in his 2004 book, “Economics and Land Use Planning”.

There is a whole series of excellent papers from Paul Cheshire and various colleagues at the LSE(London School of Economics). There is a good summary paper, “What we Know (and Don’t Know) about the Effect of Planning on Economic Performance”, by Max Nathan and Henry Overman. It includes references to the series of papers over the years, in which the LSE’s research was advancing.

There is a “SERC Blogspot” at the LSE; they post articles about each new finding as it emerges.

Thatchernomics resulted in a turn-around of many of the factors that had been damaging UK productivity and competitiveness, but it failed to address the urban planning system, possibly because of the vested interests of the country club Tory land owners who make thousands of percent "planning gain" on their land holdings. The McKinsey Institute suggested that the land planning system in the UK was now the main reason for UK productivity being 20% to 40% below other mature OECD economies. (Cont.....)

(Cont.....) The UK land planning system reduces productivity by several mechanisms. Firstly, it forces businesses to use sub-optimal amounts of land for efficient processes. Anyone who has worked in a business that lacked space, with a boss complaining that he could not afford to buy or rent any more, will be able to relate to this.
Secondly, the high cost of housing is a workforce cost input.
Thirdly, local agglomeration economies of the "Silicon Valley" type are completely prevented from occurring, due to the lack of spare land or affordable land for potential new participants.
Fourthly, "anti competitive" effects are very strong. New business startups and even the opening of new branches and the expansion of premises, are prevented, to the benefit of "incumbents".

The "rebound" in UK automobile manufacturing is highly "relative". The UK never produced significant quantities of vehicles anyway in international terms, and to be only now exceeding 1971 production, is not exactly something to be proud of. To put it in perspective, the UK is now number 13 among nations, for automobile production. Iran is number 12, the Czech Republic is number 14, and Canada number 15. Spain, Russia and Mexico are numbers 9, 10 and 11. South Korea, India and Brazil are higher up the list again.

I would argue that the expertise and innovation that there is among the British, would be capable of putting Britain far higher than this, especially since Thatchernomics, so that "something" is holding them back.....! And even what they have now, will have a lot to do with government and local government suspending the costs and barriers normally associated with the planning system, to induce the restoration of sectors in which jobs have been lost. Meanwhile, the thousands of flowers that might have bloomed in the UK urban economy, that no-one even understands, are an ongoing casualty of the land planning system. The UK economy as a whole would do far better with a Houston "somewhere" in it.

I see your point Phil, but perhaps the best thing Huston could do for the UK people, is drop one of their rockets on Whitehall.

As long as they have their stupid preoccupation with alternate energy, they will have an alternate economy. Industry can not survive in a country with high wages & high inputs.

While they have this green delusions, that wind power is good for the planet, & China keeps buying our iron ore, the fastest growing UK city will continue to be Perth Oz, & their only flourishing industry the export of trained people.

Lets hope they don't send us any of their planners, we've got more than enough of them of our own.

Well, thanks Phil from NZ. I think.

>>Pericles, you are half right. I recommend an extremely enlightening online short book: "The Flow of Money and Its Impact on Local Economies" by William Fruth<<

I'm not quite sure how and where this delightful little book addresses "congestion", as such. It doesn't mention it even once - also, "crowding" and "overcrowding" are conspicuous by their absence.

But I do hope Ludwig didn't get around to reading it (fortunately, there's not much chance of that), because he would choke over the author's summary:

"Aside from immigration policy, the steps necessary to stop or contain population growth are undesirable. Therefore communities should embrace an increase in their population and enjoy the benefits of having a desirable place to live and a strong economy."

Sounds good to me, of course.

So let me see if I can discover a point in your response.

>>The simple fact is that strong CBD's are unique to only a few cities, that are sustained by flows of finance sector fee income and bureaucratic income<<

Are you suggesting that Sydney's CBD is "strong"? Or the opposite - it's not very clear which you mean.

>>Germany has a so called "network of global cities" instead of one primary one<<

Ummm... yes. They also have a very strong tradition of family-owned SMEs, something that Australia lacks. Northern Italy has many of the same characteristics, but as with Germany, it has evolved over centuries without the need for government intervention.

>>You might as well get all stressed out at the long distances that rural workers commute, and insist that farmers move into multi storey buildings so their workers too can catch trains.<<

Did I suggest this? If I did, I haven't the faintest idea why I would say something quite so bizarre.

Incidentally, which was the half that I got wrong?

Pericles, I think you and I are on the same side. You really do like Fruth’s booklet? I do not think Sydney has a “strong CBD”, and in fact I think it is unlikely that more than about 10 cities worldwide will ever do so. Everything I am saying, is supportive of your argument re decentralisation. I just do not get your cynicism about roads.
I believe roads ARE the answer, or at least some system that still allows for the entry and exit points to the infrastructure that roads do:
“Freedom Transit”
http://freedomtransit.com/

“EDM Skyway”:
http://www.innov8transport.com/

Fixed-route-based mass public transport systems simply cannot match automobility for “demand enabling” and the minimisation of “economic rent” in urban land. This has paramount significance for economic progress.
Do read my earlier comments, especially the ones on Tuesday. Note that I make an argument for internodal road networks, and against radial highways that focus congestion and land rent at CBD’s.
I will go right out on a limb and argue that no economy will develop like those of the USA and other nations, without the same sustained period of automobile-based urban development. Mainstream economists have completely missed the vital role of urban land market cyclical volatility in the broader economic picture. Unfortunately, share market bubbles have hogged all the attention, when even in the 1930’s depression, it was urban land markets that were most responsible for the severity. Economic cyclical volatility was a norm right up to this time, with urban land markets being a primary factor.
The economic stability and sustained growth in many economies that marked the decades following WW2, had everything to do with the fact that for the first time ever, urban land prices were “anchored” in the value of the surrounding rural land, just as long as developers in genuine competition with each other, could “leapfrog” one another’s land banks and obtain genuine rural-priced land for development. In cities with this attribute, the cost of new fringe developments is set by rural land prices, plus cost of development, plus a modest profit. No “planning gain”. (Cont.....)

Even in France, this era is referred to as “Le Trentes Gloireuses”. But in the UK, the urban planning system introduced in 1947 perpetuated and indeed steadily worsened the level of “planning gain” in new developments, and cyclical volatility in urban land prices remained high, in contrast to the USA and other nations with vigorous automobile-based development.
The current “Great Recession” is very serious precisely because the role of urban land market cyclical volatility has once again returned with a vengeance in many nations and regions. This restoration of volatility was preceded by escalating “planning gain” in new developments (noteworthy in California, Ireland and Spain) – thanks to “save the planet” anti-automobile urban planning.
Rail-based development simply does not have the “planning gain elimination” and “economic rent minimisation” effect that automobile-based development has. This is because the land rendered accessible by the infrastructure “investment”, is in long ribbons and comparatively small in “square miles” quantity. Transfers and park-and-ride simply do not substitute for automobility, in the economic effects. And as Anthony Downs pointed out in his 1994 book “New Visions for Metropolitan America”, rail-based development ends up leaving large swathes of land “in between”, usually in wedge shapes, that would dramatically boost economic efficiency if developed with roads – but doing so immediately sounds the death knell of the viability of the commuter rail system.
“Location” is rationed by price, and rail based development is marked by longer and longer runs out into the surrounding countryside as lower income earners and the young are “priced out” of the more central locations. Because rail based “sprawl” is in ribbon patterns rather than “carpet”, the distances involved rapidly become so long that the economy is less efficient that an automobile based one. Look at the former USSR’s cities for a real life illustration of commuter transport based on rails. Apartments on rail routes dozens of miles out in the countryside were abandoned en mass after the fall of communism.

Just a comment: why urban land price bubbles have a far more severe and lingering effect on the economy, than share market bubbles. The price of urban land is a cost input into nearly all economic activity. Whatever “wealth creation” occurs through a volatile upside of a land price cycle, is zero-sum transfer. The people and businesses from whom the wealth is transferred, have lost some part of their ability to spend money on other things, including productive assets, and in general the higher cost of urban land makes everything that is “produced” more expensive due to this cost input (including via the workforce’s cost of housing).

Then on the downside of the bubble, large numbers of people are affected by negative equity, many of whom did not willingly engage in speculation, whether with savings or borrowing; in contrast to the share market where those who lose their shirts willingly took the risk in the first place. Shares are not a basic human necessity; housing is, and to some extent, land is an essential for any productive business.

The reason that the effects of an urban land price bubble linger long after the initial crash or decline, is that large numbers of ordinary people and “main street” businesses are affected, through far less deliberate adventurism on their part – and the total sums of money involved in the loss of equity, are actually far greater. Anyone who invested in shares in around 1935, would have made a lot greater return on income by 1955, than someone who invested in property. The share market had resumed “cycling”; property was still on a LONG decline/stagnation. The same can be said of Japan, 1992 to now.

Look, too, at the many share market crashes that have occurred during the era of stable property prices and high economic stability: how much lasting damage did any of them do, in comparison to the economic crashes in which urban land was heavily involved? I am arguing that this is why THIS current “great recession” will be BIG, especially for Spain and Ireland. (Cont....)

(Cont….) But there is hardly a country that does not have an unburst house price bubble right now, if it does not have an already-burst one. Canada. Australia. China. Sweden. France.

http://www.thebubblebubble.com/

http://www.thebubblebubble.com/european-housing-bubble/

The USA at least has an “anchor” bloc of States that did not have such a bubble, along with many other attributes that make these States what Germany is to the EU. But note that Germany appears to have the makings of a house price bubble now, as investor “flight to safety” overwhelms the German planning system which could be credited until now, with keeping urban fringe land supply sufficiently elastic to keep urban land prices stable. Switzerland is experiencing similar disturbing symptoms.
I also argue that China’s economic miracle will hit a massive glass ceiling, possibly even harder than Japan’s did, and for the same reasons. Insane levels of “planning gain” and capital gains on urban land. Urban land prices being high relative to incomes and GDP, is an economic disadvantage, not a sign of economic power. Then there is the volatility. The price of urban land in Chinese cities is crazy; it is becoming like the famous anecdote once upon a time about one block of Tokyo being “worth more than the entire state of California”. It makes no sense for Chinese real estate to cost more in absolute terms, than that in countries with much higher incomes.

It is perfectly logical for many international businesses doing their sums these days, to pick Southern USA for the location of their new factories etc, because it is just about the only part of the world that still has low cost urban land, and this does count as a cost input, believe it or not. The culture, regulations, taxes, workforce attitudes etc count too. The in-migration of willing workers is massive, and “new employment” rates have kept up remarkably well.

I recommend three articles: Joel Kotkin: “The Third Coast” in the Wall Street Journal recently; “Foreign Industrial Investment is Reshaping America” on New Geography.com; and Ryan Avent : “Too Hot for Jobs” in “The Economist”.

<Urban land prices being high relative to incomes and GDP, is an economic disadvantage, not a sign of economic power.>

Yes, but the process and its undesirable consequences are predicated upon population growth: In China's case the result of people moving to cities from rural areas. Would it be possible without the population growth? To nowhere near the same extent I would think.

Harking back a few days, this Phil bloke from Kiwiland wrote:

<< As for this Ludwig guy, what is his "final solution"? >> … followed the most extraordinarily over-the-top prattle!

Then in his next post he wrote:

<< Ross Elliott is right that an increase in population within a given area will involve an increase in traffic from most of the new people using cars >>

Well, der…. what was I saying??

I don’t think I’ve seen such a dumb contradiction in all my years on this forum!

Yes OF COURSE population growth is a major factor in congestion. So then, what on earth is he boring it up little old Ludwig for??

It would appear that Phil is another one of these extraordinarily unbalanced commentators, who knows a great deal about one side of the issue and is absolutely loathe to even broach any consideration of the other side. That is, he knows all about linear and non-linear relationships between the various factors and is apparently willing to consider anything…except any reduction in the population growth rate or final population size of a city!

What’s that you say?

‘The final size of a city!! No, our cities are just going to keep growing forever!’

Yeah, right!

And I thought Ross Elliott was presenting an unbalanced perspective!! ( :>|

Fester: urbanisation and population growth are both part of "development" of an economy. No society that stays rural can afford to pay for modern technology and healthcare.

Ludwig: you are wrenching my comment about congestion way out of context. I said: ".....an increase in population WITHIN A GIVEN AREA will involve an increase in traffic from most of the new people using cars....."

My whole argument has been in favour of decentralisation and low urban density and multi-nodal urban form and "new cities". Modern urban planning fetishes hold that all population increase must be squashed into existing built areas. This is what my whole argument is against. I am pointing out that the assumptions that these fetishes are based on, are false. My comment that you take out of context, is aimed at the absurd shallow belief that motivates large numbers of voters to support the policy of urban intensification and public transport "investments", which is that "almost everybody else will use public transport as a result and leave the roads clearer for MEEEEEEEEE."

I say there is very definitely limits on the relationship between the physical size and population density that can be accommodated in most cities, most of the time. To reiterate, there will only ever be about 10 "global cities" in the world, of the NYC - London - Hong Kong - Tokyo - Singapore class. The crucial factor that has to be present for a city to be both high density AND high-income, is a high proportion of employment in "industries" such as finance, that have very high incomes and very low requirement for space.

(Cont.....)

(Cont....) Most cities, most of the time, will function far more efficiently as a replica of Houston. To reiterate the reason why: a low, flat urban land rent curve means that households and businesses can locate very efficiently relative to each other and to urban amenities; cities with a high, "peaky" urban land rent curve "sort" everyone and everything into locations NOT on the basis of efficiency of function, but on the basis of what they can AFFORD. See William Wheaton’s 2002 paper, “Commuting, Ricardian Rent and Housing Price Appreciation in Cities with Dispersed Employment and Mixed Land Use”. Peter Hall et al pointed out way back in 1973, in the massive 2-volume report "The Containment of Urban England", that the perverse and unintended consequence of the 1947 Town and Country Urban Planning system was to force people into LONGER commutes due to their inability to afford homes at efficient locations, combined with exponentially increased congestion at the few focal points of the carefully "planned" urban form.

Only 3 things really matter for efficient commute times, in most cities, most of the time: dispersion of employment and jobs-housing balance; road capacity; and the flatness of the urban land rent curve. Trying to start with mass public transport and work backwards regardless of the fact that most cities, most of the time, have to exist on inbound flows of money based on more land-intensive sources of employment than high finance, is the ultimate in “tail wags dog”, cargo-cult, physical determinism. The UK has this “one size fits all” planning policy, and look what it has done to every city outside London. The UK is covered in cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Buffalo, only with high density, low quality, unaffordable houses, and chances of economic recovery close to nil, in contrast to Detroit. The fact that Detroit’s urban land prices have been allowed to fall so low, while UK cities remain strangled by planning-system rationing, massive economic rent transfers (to land owners), squeezed household discretionary incomes, and cost barriers to new enterprise, is the “decider”.

(Cont.....)

(Cont.....)

Not one of the international businesses that are moving in to huge blocks of cheap land in Detroit, would have bothered to even look at Liverpool or Newcastle or Sheffield; or, for that matter, NYC or California’s growth-contained, insanely expensive cities.

The USA's low density cities have over time, slaughtered the UK's high density cities hands down for commute times as well as housing affordability. This is a major inconvenient truth for the whining anti-sprawl activists. 95% of people in low density cities in the USA, can afford living space, housing quality, AND location efficiency of a kind that only the people in the top 5% of wealth can afford in a UK city. AND rates of marriage and child-bearing are higher in the affordable, low density US cities, and this means that MORE households are having to find locations relative to TWO jobs AND schools; yet this disadvantage is NOT reflected in commute times, which are still BETTER, not worse.

Besides the advantage of better spatial balance between jobs and workers, the decentralised urban form has far greater utilisation of road space in BOTH directions during BOTH of the day's rush hours. Neighbours are getting in their cars and driving off in the opposite direction to each other on secondary suburban routes, instead of some higher proportion of people all cramming onto the same highway to the centre.

So the free market wins hands down for urban efficiency. Utopian planning should have died with the former USSR.

Phil from NZ,

Not even von Mises can argue against the laws of physics and the ultimate limits they put on growth. The Do the Math blog of A/Prof Tom Murphy (Physics, University of California, San Diego) is very informative on this

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

While some Green organisations do appear hysterical and irrational on a number of issues, it lacks credibility to say that all of the scientists who have been claiming that there are serious problems, with the endorsement of their learned societies, must all be wild-eyed lunatics, grossly incompetent, or part of some conspiracy, simply because their findings are a threat to your financial interests or pet ideology. The Global Footprint Network (an international thinktank of scientists, engineers, and economists) has been adding up the accounts on environmental and resource issues based on UN and national government statistics. The graph on p. 21 of their 2010 atlas makes it clear that it would take the resources of 3 Earths to give everyone in the global population a modest Western European standard of living, even if the resources were divided equally.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

It is completely hysterical to bring in issues like forced sterilisation or abortion in an Australian context. As I said in another post on this thread, our fertility rate is slightly below replacement level and has been since 1976. It is not a problem, and forced steriliasions and abortions wouldn't stop high population growth, which is overwhelmingly due to government immigration policy.

If it is impossible to stop population growth or decrease it drastically, how have they done it in Japan, Germany, Finland, South Korea, etc.?

(cont'd)

(cont'd)

I agree with you that decentralisation would actually make most people's lives better, be better for family life and raising children, and might well cost less in terms of infrastructure, although there are still limits in terms of how much agricultural land and habitat for other species that we want to cover up with housing and shopping centres.

There is also the issue of who should pay the infrastructure costs. You are in favour of forcing existing residents to share them. This might have made sense in the 1950s and 1960s when there really was full employment, and it could be argued that the population was below the optimum. This is no longer the case. The vast majority of wxisitng residents are not going to benefit from the population growth, and it will make life harder for many of them. Getting rid of growthist politicians is a far more attractive strategy than paying more to make our lives worse.

From the 2006 Productivity Commission report into Immigration, it is clear that the days when mass migration was a win/win proposition are long past. They found that the per capita growth in GDP was trivial, with the very modest benefits mostly distributed to the owners of capital and the migrants themselves. They found that the distributional effects would actually make most people worse off because the large number of migrants flooding onto the labour market depresses wages. See p. 154 and the graph on the following page

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf

See also the executive summary of the Immigration Department's report on Long Term Physical Implications of Net Overseas Migration

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/_pdf/physical-implications-migration-report-1.pdf

Phil

My comment was not related to development, so I will be a little clearer. You make much of the fact that urban planning is inefficient. I agree, but why is it inefficient? Is it inefficient because the process is restrictive and obscure, or for other reasons? And I would suggest that while the need for re-zonings and development approvals correlates with population growth, the per capita gdp does not. So while cities and economies might be bigger, there is no evidence to suggest that the inhabitants will be more prosperous. And going by the government debt growth in Australia, it would seem that the result is more likely a cost.

Yet you seem to think that everything would be just fine if only we would follow the right model. Been there and done that with far greater minds than yours, and with disastrous results. I would suggest that any model needs to be tested. It might be advantageous to trial a number of models on a small scale first, or at least base your predictions on real systems operating elsewhere.

Divergence, I said myself that population growth always levels off once a society reaches the modern "developed" condition. You do not have to “correct” me on this.

Energy use will not continue to increase in a linear fashion - besides population peaking, human activity becomes continually more energy efficient. I recommend the writings of the systems analyst Jesse Ausubel.

I did not argue that population growth or energy use "COULD" grow indefinitely; I argued that
1) there is no rational reason to "constrain urban growth", here and now, based on DISTANT FUTURE scare scenarios.
2) the market pricing system for scarce resources is no less moral a way of adjusting as necessary IF and when "limits" are reached, than compulsory population control and/or Statist rationing. The market is also superior in the here and now. The great conservative writer Theodore Dalrymple put it: "when I was young and idealistic, I despised the harsh and impersonal free market price system of rationing scarce resources, but then I travelled the world a bit and saw some alternatives in practice".

I am glad you agree re decentralised urban form – this is a “market price driven” solution.

I already pointed out that “the cost of infrastructure” for urban expansion would have been far lower than the excess debt accumulated by Australian households over the last 10 years for inflated cost of housing (actually land) thanks to “planning”. Is it better to accumulate SOME debt for more infrastructure, or MORE debt for NOTHING, and this debt mostly falling on the young?

I also pointed out that the immigration problem is an issue of quality. It would be crazy to exclude the kinds of people who HAVE become major contributors to our nations. We certainly should NOT let in riff-raff who do not assimilate and who remain unproductive.

But even this current growth is not “rapid” at all by historical standards.

I am glad you agree that many environmentalists are hysterical. But the "3 planets" calculation mainly applies to assumptions about "CO2 sink" forests, when there are better ways of dealing with climate change.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/earth-is-enough

What real examples, Phil?

You mention Houston and Detroit as examples. Houston's population growth is a bit under 0.25% per annum and Detroit has seen its population fall by a quarter in the first decade of the millennium. Neither of these cities have the comparatively cancerous growth rates of Australian cities. So what wonderful examples do you have for cities with high population growth rates?

Perhaps population should also be left to the free market instead of central planners.

Phil, thanks for the comprehensive response.

You wrote:

<< Ludwig: you are wrenching my comment about congestion way out of context. I said: ".....an increase in population WITHIN A GIVEN AREA will involve an increase in traffic from most of the new people using cars....." >>

I do my best to interpret things as they are supposed to be interpreted, but it is certainly one of the fundamental problems with this sort of communication that things get misinterpreted and that clarification is often needed.

But on this occasion I’m not seeing any significant difference in the way that I interpreted this particular point and the way in which you have clarified it.

Yes, population increase within a given area is a major factor in congestion.

So I guess what you are trying to say here is that we CAN have overall population increase just as long as it is not in areas with congestion problems. Is this right?

Your whole argument, as you say, is about decentralisation. So if we can get new residents to live outside of our congested cities, then all will be honky dory, end of story!

Well, I must vehemently disagree.

Decentralisation has some value, within a stable-population or very-low-population-growth scenario. But within anything like the current very high population growth scenario, it is NOT the solution!

The LAST thing we need is to just duplicate a lot of the problems in new centres, or to turn large areas of natural or rural environment into intensive human environments, with all the associated impacts on the surrounding environment.

Fester, I know Detroit has shrunk drastically over the last 30 years. My point is that its economy will rebound, even if its population does not, because its land prices have been allowed to fall in response. But the UK has a "rust belt" in which housing and urban land NEVER become affordable no matter how high unemployment goes and for how long - because the urban planning system keeps the prices propped up.

For statistics on population growth in US cities:

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002769-the-urban-us-growth-and-decline

Houston grew from 4 million people to 5 million, 2000 to 2010. Without house price median multiples moving much over the "affordable" 3.0. This phenomenon is replicated in many cities and regions in the USA. See data at the above link. The fastest growth rates in US cities blow today’s tiny Antipodean minds. Melbourne WAS once the world’s fastest-growing city, in the era of “can do” pioneering. The pioneers descendants are “can’t do” wusses.

While "per capita incomes" tend to be lower in the affordable-price US cities (there are 200 out of 260, in fact, it is not just Houston), discretionary income after housing costs are much higher. Gyourko, Mayer and Sinai suggest in "Superstar Cities" (2006) that large-scale spatial "sorting" is occurring in the US, with lower income workers and the industries that employ them, tending to agglomerate in the cities where land costs are low. The UK has no equivalent phenomenon; the equivalent workers tend to be unemployed. Australia is doing exactly the same to its economy.

Ryan Avent, in “Too Hot For Jobs”, finds that when high-income industries open up in low-land-cost cities like Austin, several times as many spin-off jobs for lower income workers are created in comparison to the same new jobs in a high-land-cost city, probably because there is so much more discretionary income after housing costs, circulating and trickling down, not to mention business profits after land costs.

And I repeat what I said to “Divergence”: is it better to accumulate SOME debt for more infrastructure, or MORE debt for NOTHING, and this debt mostly falling on the young?

Ludwig, you say:

".....The LAST thing we need is to just duplicate a lot of the problems in new centres, or to turn large areas of natural or rural environment into intensive human environments, with all the associated impacts on the surrounding environment....."

OK, now we are getting to the difference between you and me. You see the fact that Australia's land mass is 0.6% urbanised, shock, horror, and I see it as quite OK to increase this by, say, 0.01% per decade for a few decades, as some sort of crime against the Gaia Earth Mother.

There is no rational justification at all to “preserve farmland” in any nation that exports massive surpluses of primary produce. All the income growth in the world economy for the last 60 years has been in urban economies; the relative “terms of trade” between rural and urban product has moved fourfold in favour of urban product during that time. Refer Richard Florida, “The World Is Spiky”. The fact that farmland is only worth $2000 to $10,000 per acre, shows what a low value use of land it is. AND it’s environmental impact is different to, not better than, “urban”.

I agree we do not want to duplicate a lot of the existing problems that exist with Australia's cities. In fact taking the pressure off the existing cities by having new ones to move to with far lower costs and far lower congestion, would be a b----y good idea. The problems that already exist are being worsened by the "growth containment, city-centre first, fixed-route-transport-system-first" planning policies. Infastructure costs are in fact higher under this scenario; there is no authoritative academic literature at all that says otherwise. The cost of disruption and access and the cost of land, make infrastructure provision and maintenance and upgrading far more expensive than greenfields expansion or long-term low density.

There is low-hanging fruit in cost savings under intensification from VERY low density to "not so low" density, but after that it is all counter-productive. I will post references as soon as my word allowance on this forum allows

Calthorpe and Fulton, “The Regional City” (2001) found that while savings can be made from more compact development, these are not linear: at a certain level of density costs begin to rise again, mainly because a point is reached at which existing infrastructure is insufficient, and expensive new investments are called for by way of replacement or expansion.

Holcombe and Williams, “The impact of population density on municipal government Expenditures” (2008) found that increased population density had no statistically significant effect on government expenditures in cities with populations from 50,000 to 500,000, and higher population density is associated with higher government expenditures for cities larger than 500,000.

Ladd, “Population Growth, Density and the Costs of Providing Public Services” (1992), finds that:
".......The increasing per capita spending as the density of counties rises above 250 people per square mile provides important evidence to counter the view, which emerges from engineering and planning studies, that higher density reduces public sector costs....."

Cox and Utt (2004) “The Costs of Sprawl Reconsidered: What the Data Really Show”, find that:

“.........The highest density municipalities have higher than average expenditures per capita; the slowest growing municipalities have higher than average expenditures per capita; and the oldest municipalities have the highest expenditures of all per capita.......

“.........two reports: Costs of Sprawl--2000 and The Costs of Sprawl—Revisited, projected that from 2000 to 2025, America would incur $227.4 billion in gross additional costs for what the study terms "uncontrolled growth" (less dense, more sprawling growth) versus "controlled growth" (more dense, less sprawling growth). This equates to approximately $9.1 billion in gross additional costs per year.
The figure of $227.4 billion may seem large. Yet in the context of 25 years and an average population of 115 million households, it is actually rather modest. The $227.4 billion would amount to only $80 per household annually, or $29 per capita……”

It is obvious that THESE costs are miniscule in comparison to the costs imposed via inflated house prices, by policies of urban growth containment; and the latter are shared grossly inequitably.

"So what can realistically be done about congestion? There is no silver bullet."

It is telling that Ross Elliott fails to mention the driving force behind the worsening congestion problems in our capital cities.

As other posters have pointed out, we simply cannot build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the demands imposed by rapid, immigration-driven population growth. Hence the worsening infrastructure bottlenecks and congestion in our capital cities.

Slashing Australia's ridiculously large immigration intake would obviously ameliorate the growth pressures on our already overcrowded capital cities and prevent worsening congestion down the track.

Yet, Ross Elliott fails to mention immigration in his article. I was puzzled by this glaring omission until I stumbled upon some of Mr. Elliott's other scribblings. A self-declared expert in urban development matters (i.e. a rent-seeking property developer with a vested commercial interest in endless growth), Mr. Elliott is a big fan of a "Big Australia", irrespective of the costs. According to Elliott, flooding our capital cities with hundreds of thousands of immigrants ever year will actually SOLVE our infrastructure woes, while also making our cities more "vibrant" and "innovative"!

Scribbler: "smaller population = less tax revenue."

So what? A smaller population = a smaller requisite infrastructure outlay.

Interestingly, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway all have significantly smaller populations than Australia but all enjoy better urban infrastructure than anything one finds in this country.

<< You see the fact that Australia's land mass is 0.6% urbanised, shock, horror, and I see it as quite OK to increase this by, say, 0.01% per decade for a few decades, as some sort of crime against the Gaia Earth Mother. >>

Dear oh dear Phil, it would not just be the area of land consumed by new cities and towns under your decentralisation plan that would impinge on the environment. You’d have to consider the total human footprint.

And what about the quality of life of existing residents in those currently small centres on which very rapid growth rates would be imposed?

So I’ve got to ask; which is more important to you – effectively dealing with congestion or allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight?

For all your apparent knowledge and concern about congested cities, it would appear that the latter absolutely takes priority with you.

Why??

The inescapable fact is that population growth worsens congestion in our already badly congested cities. And therefore, it should be one of the keys factors that the likes of yourself and Ross Elliott should be lobbying to reduce.

Decentralisation just doesn’t cut it! Even the most amazingly effective decentralisation, along with our best efforts at building new roads, upgrading existing roads, implementing bus, train and bicycle alternatives to driving one’s own car, etc, would in all probability fall way short of achieving large-scale reductions to congestion. And high and continuous population growth would work directly against these efforts!

So it appears to me that you are a presenting a very contradictory POV Phil.

.

Spot on, drab.

Some good examples there, drab.

>>Interestingly, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway all have significantly smaller populations than Australia but all enjoy better urban infrastructure than anything one finds in this country.<<

Denmark has the second-highest level of taxation in the world, some 55% higher than Australia (48.8% of GDP, vs. our 31.5%).

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tax_tot_tax_as_of_gdp-taxation-total-as-of-gdp

Finland and Norway are not far behind, on 46.9% of GDP (49% higher) and 40.3% (28% higher) respectively. Switzerland is still living off the income of all those secret "deposits" made in the 1940s, so is not strictly comparable, but even there, the tax take is over 13% higher.

It would seem that a more obvious comparison would be "the higher the tax rate, the better the infrastructure".

But of course, that wouldn't support your theory, so can safely be ignored.

What a lot of post-rational nonsense on this thread. A few examples of nations with lower population than "x", have good infrastructure, therefore low population = good infrastructure? Whatever happened to objective analysis; data sets, correlations, causations? Presumably Guyana, Djibouti and East Timor also have fabulous infrastructure?

Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway have mostly managed to avoid the absurd inflation of the price of urban land relative to incomes and GDP, that has accompanied "urban planning" unreasons in Australia. Expect fiscal problems at all levels of government in any of these countries that go the same way as the UK, California, and Australia. These nations infrastructure problems are a legacy of utter unreason in urban planning, which is what my earlier comments expose.

One of the biggest unreasons in our age, is the "cultural relativism" that ignores that a nation with centuries of a near monoculture of Protestantism with strong ethics of work, thrift, education and personal responsibility, miiiiiight just be more successful than multicultural societies or nations with mono-cultures that are stuck in the medieval era or worse.

Scandinavians who have emigrated to the USA are far more prosperous than those back home. Somalians in the USA are far more prosperous than Somalians in Scandinavia.

Pericles makes a good point. Perhaps the answer is "the more that has been spent on the right infrastructure, the better"?

Ludwig deliberately smokescreens the issues by not engaging with my actual point. Now it’s

“…..the quality of life of existing residents in those currently small centres on which very rapid growth rates would be imposed…..”

There is AMPLE land to build “new cities” without having to spoil anyone’s view, but why shouldn’t people in “small centres” simply move out to the numerous further “small centres” that exist in hinterlands all over the country? It is utterly non-democratic, elitist, and a betrayal of the younger generation if a selfish minority hold the urban future hostage.

As for the “total human footprint”, is Australia not utilising massive amounts of land for resource extraction and food production, for EXPORT? Didn’t I say this already?

<< Ludwig deliberately smokescreens the issues by not engaging with my actual point. >>

What point is that, Phil?

That we should keep on building new cities, and then when they become congested, build some more, and so on, ad-nauseum? And that this sort of decentralisation (or recentralisation) comprises your whole argument to combat congestion!

Is this the point that I am supposedly missing?

Please clarify. Thankyou.

<< As for the “total human footprint”, is Australia not utilising massive amounts of land for resource extraction and food production, for EXPORT? >>

So what’s your point here? That it is ok to just keep on converting agricultural landscapes into city-scapes and urban sprawl?

Ever-more people would mean ever-less productive agricultural land, ever-more domestic consumption of our produce and ever-less export income, all else being equal. How do you think this would work for us as our population burgeons?

continued

I asked you three questions in my last post.

The first one was:

>> …what about the quality of life of existing residents in those currently small centres on which very rapid growth rates would be imposed? <<

Your answer is that they should simply pull up stumps and move to the new urban fringe or whatever environment that they find most attractive, and that it is perfectly alright for there to be large-scale population growth in their areas and that if they don’t like it, tough bickies! Hmmmm!

But you have completely avoided the other two questions.

Are they too hard?

I repeat them:

>> …which is more important to you – effectively dealing with congestion or allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight? <<

and

>> For all your apparent knowledge and concern about congested cities, it would appear that the latter absolutely takes priority with you. Why?? <<

This type of question deserves a definition of its own...

>>...which is more important to you – effectively dealing with congestion or allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight?<<

It is structured as a straight "either/or" proposition, when it is no such thing. Given that no-one would remotely consider agreeing with the idea that population will, or even should, increase both rapidly and indefinitely, there is no genuine choice available in the question.

I propose that this kind of pointless persiflage posing as paradox is henceforth termed a "Half Ludwig".

Because that isn't the whole story, of course. To qualify as a Full Ludwig, a further step is required.

The obligatory follow-up question. A question that - as a direct result of the fault-lines in the first question - is completely impossible to answer.

>>For all your apparent knowledge and concern about congested cities, it would appear that the latter absolutely takes priority with you. Why??<<

A subtle, but quite effective, variation on the "when did you stop beating your wife" journalist's cliché, the faux-naïf "Why??" at the end completes the picture.

Having fired off a Full Ludwig, the next phase is simple.

Pretend to be shocked and dismayed that your question hasn't been answered.

>>...you have completely avoided the other two questions. Are they too hard?<<

Brilliant strategy, so long as you are only interested in hearing the sound of your own voice.

OK, I will keep trying to clarify my point so even Ludwig can't claim it is not clear. I do not say new cities should be built when old ones become congested, I say new cities should be allowed to develop at any time, and congestion would be minimised right from the start. Refer the papers of Peter Gordon et al and Alex Anas et al on decentralisation and the stability of travel time. US cities with fast-growing low density and affordable housing have far superior trip-to-work times to the opposite extreme, the UK's heavily planned, high density, unaffordable housing cities. I have already explained in depth the reasons why.

".....Ever-more people would mean ever-less productive agricultural land, ever-more domestic consumption of our produce and ever-less AGRICULTURAL export income, all else being equal...."

This is a GOOD thing. Note I inserted the word "agricultural". I already explained; incomes related to agricultural production have declined relative to incomes related to urban production, by a factor of 4 since 1950. Japan did not become a wealthy nation by FEEDING the world, and it was not prevented from becoming a wealthy nation by having to IMPORT most of its food and resources.

Sir Paul Callaghan calculated for New Zealand, that if it had 100 more of the same kinds of urban businesses as its top 40 MANUFACTURING EXPORTERS, its average income would go from bottom of the OECD to the top. But more jobs in agriculture and exports of agricultural produce, would be “jobs”, but low paid ones that would drag the average DOWN. It is just plain stupid to “conserve” rural economies and “limit” urban economies; even “harm” to the environment being neutral.

The McKinsey Institute’s 1998 paper, “Driving Productivity and Growth in the UK Economy”, proved that it was impossible for an economic agglomeration like Silicon Valley to occur at all in the UK, thanks to the urban planners. The same problem applies to Australia and NZ, and California now. The contemporary equivalents of Bill Gates would move to Texas to start their fledgling low-budget enterprises.

(Cont..….)

(Cont…….)
Re. your two questions YOU SAY I am not answering:

“Dealing with congested cities” is nothing whatsoever to do with population control. I already said that 11 billion people could live at low urban densities equivalent to Houston, and not fill the present USA; leaving several continents for farming and resource extraction.

IF the world really started “running out of food”, then the price of farmland would go up to the point that farmland would not be affordable to develop, and sell houses and buildings on it to urban populations, who also would be paying a whole lot higher proportion of their income for food. Refer Robert Shiller, “Unlearned Lessons from the Housing Bubble”.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/unlearned-lessons-from-the-housing-bubble

I already said that population increase “levels out” of its own accord. You are setting up straw man arguments that do not resemble anything I am saying. I am not sure if I specifically said that I accept projections of a peak global population of 11 to 12 billion people, or that I see this as no problem whatsoever; but this is indeed what I hold.

I already explained that IF and when population increased to some actually unmanageable level, either globally or in too great a majority of nations, things would find their own level. Political pre-emptions (especially compulsory birth control) are LESS MORAL than simply letting human ingenuity cope as best it can. If and when a “mass cull” of human numbers occurs due to the consequences of humanity over-reaching in “development”, so be it; no one tyrant is responsible; it is an “act of nature”. Humanity has suffered mass culls for most of its existence, never due to global over-population, but to lack of technology and to bad politics. Politically imposed “pre-emptions” always left a government judged by history as “tyrannical”. I already recommended you read “Environmentalism Refuted” by George Reisman.

http://mises.org/daily/661

Of course the modern Green high priesthood objects to reason and enlightenment just as much as the medieval papal hierarchy ever did

How was the beach, Ludwig? Did it ever occur to you that your presence not only despoiled it but that it was less congested after you left?

Barring localised catastrophe, congestion has been getting worse since hominids developed sufficient frontal cortex to wonder where all the mammoth disappeared to.

Perhaps to better impress people with your line of argument you could always include a clear and specific statement as to what exactly you are going to do, or do without, to reduce congestion.

Then, even if your questions don't convince others to do without or do with less, they will at least be impressed with your demonstration of self-sacrifice.

You could call this a Full Ludwig with Pike… Not to be confused with the rationale of, "Mum won't like it, Uncle Arthur."

Congestion is the flipside of agglomeration economies in the urban economy. It is amusing that urban planners read Ed Glaeser and get all excited over CBD agglomeration economies, yet they throw up their hands in horror over "induced traffic". Is not an "induced driver" a new participant in a growing agglomeration economy somewhere in the urban economy?

Free markets actually find their own balance between agglomeration economies and congestion and land "rents" (in the "economic rent" sense of the term). Congestion, labour cost pressures, and economic rents all drive decentralisation. Agglomeration economies are of multiple types. It is wrong to expect all of them to locate at the same central location. Garment manufacturers quit Manhattan decades ago, for good reasons.

Having a number of different types of agglomerations spread through an urban economy, maximises the agglomeration economies and minimises the congestion dis-economies. It also minimises the economic rent cost of land to businesses and households, and minimises labour cost pressures. Furthermore, agglomeration economies need not involve contiguity of the participants. Access is the crucial thing. "A few minutes car trip" substitutes, in Silicon Valley, for Manhattan-ites elevator ride, walk, and subway ride, to interact face to face with other participants in the "agglomeration".

Typical urban economies now have less than 20% of their employment in the CBD. Even Manhattan falls short of this as a proportion of the total "New York" urban economy, which covers an area the size of Belgium. No Australian city has more than 20% of the urban economy's employment, in its CBD.

Of course congestion is at its worst for CBD-related commuting. The relative lack of congestion for the other 80% plus of commuting, is a success of “market” balancing in the economy that goes unnoticed. And inter-nodal congestion is the easiest fixed, because the roads involved are utilised in both directions during both "rush hours"; adding a new lane to an existing single one doubles the capacity; adding one to two adds 50%; adding one to three adds 33%, and so on. But adding capacity to already-large CBD transport infrastructure is far less effective.

Haaaaaa hahahaaaaa!

When Pericles starts carrying on like a Pommie pork chop I know I have got to the nub of the issue!

This is indeed the question that needs answering –

>>...which is more important to you – effectively dealing with congestion or allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight? <<

He devotes a whole post to total abject prattle, to the extent that one has to wonder about his sanity, and of course he doesn’t even attempt to answer the question that his post is written in response to!! ( :>|

This is classic Pericles. I could call it a Full Pericles with double pike….except that he landed on his head while attempting this amazing manoeuvre!

Hope it didn’t hurt too much, but did knock a bit sense into him so that he might not try it again and might instead address the debate at hand rather than filibustering off on bizarre and meaningless tangents! It certainly couldn’t have knocked any sense out of him!!

The beach Pericles. I recommend the beach. It’s a great place to mull out. It can be a real sanity saver at times! But do it soon, because there’s not much sanity there left to save, apparently!

.

<< I do not say new cities should be built when old ones become congested, I say new cities should be allowed to develop at any time, and congestion would be minimised right from the start. >>

Yes Phil, I understand that.

<< This is a GOOD thing >>

No it is not! You are thinking in very restricted terms when you say that economic growth generated by urban production is much higher than for agricultural production.

continued

The key point is that a rapidly growing population in your new cities would need lots more economic turnover in order to have the same standard of living as the current population now has, let alone lead to an average increase in the quality of life across the whole country.

A big increase in urban economic production in the last two or three decades hasn’t helped us much, and is not likely to in the future. It potentially could. But let’s face it, we are not likely to go anywhere near realising this potential.

<< “Dealing with congested cities” is nothing whatsoever to do with population control >>

Deeear oh dear! You demonstrate considerable knowledge in some areas of this broad debate, and then you skittle your credibility with such an absurd statement!

Even Ross Elliott admitted that population growth is a factor affecting congestion.

In theory, if we could achieve the most incredible things, like getting half the population of Sydney and Melbourne to recentralise in various centres, after these centres had been planned to accommodate them in such a manner that they wouldn’t then become congested ghettos, we could have the same level of population growth that we now have and actually alleviate congestion at the same time.


But this is totally theoretical and is far removed from the real situation in Australia.

In the real world, you know full well that population growth, the rate of growth and the size of our population has EVERYTHING to do with congestion.

If you could just admit this bleedingly OBVIOUS factor, I might have a little bit more inclination to explore some of the other things you are saying on this thread.

You really still don't get it, do you Ludwig.

By insisting that the only alternative to your imposition of population control on a submissive populace is "allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight", you set up a false dichotomy.

By definition, arguing with such a position is impossible. Which is why the only conceivable reason for establishing it must be in order to hear your own voice.

Have a great day on the beach.

Pericles, tis you who just completely doesn’t get it.

In the real world, that is: in Australia with our current congestion problems and our current rate of population growth, it IS INDEED a matter of being either genuinely concerned about congestion or being a high-population-growth advocate.

It is completely nonsensical to make out that you are both.

In a different world entirely it would perhaps be possible for Phil’s assertion that decentralisation is the answer to be true, and for population growth to not cause further congestion.

But here we are, in the real world, not in the land of theory and fantasy. Population growth very directly worsens congestion. No matter what else we might actually be able to do to address congestion, this will remain true. Or at the very least, it will greatly undermine even our best efforts to alleviate congestion.

And the population factor is huge!

So again, it is most definitely nonsensical to be concerned about congestion and be willing to consider anything at all that might help, while completely ignoring the population factor.

Your analysis of my question is not only very odd, it is entirely WRONG!

You see, there you go again Ludwig.

>>...in Australia with our current congestion problems and our current rate of population growth, it IS INDEED a matter of being either genuinely concerned about congestion or being a high-population-growth advocate<<

The either/or that you present is patently a false dichotomy.

Somebody could be rightfully concerned about city congestion, and at the same time support a low-population-growth scenario for the exact same city. They are, for a start, totally independent issues. It is entirely feasible, for example, to improve people-flow around the city with the single aim of allowing more people to live and work there.

>>It is completely nonsensical to make out that you are both<<

It is completely nonsensical, Ludwig, to make out that these are the only alternatives.

Pericles is talking sense (along with me) and Ludwig is just fooling around pretending otherwise.

Ludwig accuses ME of skittling MY credibility with absurd statements, when he is in total denial of the reality that I have patiently described. Look at this:

"......A big increase in urban economic production in the last two or three decades hasn’t helped us much, and is not likely to in the future...."

I repeat: the value of urban-economic production has increased fourfold relative to that of rural-economic production over the last 60 years. NZ has slid from the top of the OECD to the bottom during that time, its economy heavily dependent on primary produce.
The percentage of the workforce in a nation still involved in the rural economy, correlates closely to its poverty. Does Ludwig know ANYTHING about economic development and its real life history?

The "increase in urban economic production that hasn't helped us much" according to Ludwig, has actually prevented us from sliding back into the company of still-largely-rural national economies. There is no way Australia would have maintained its position well up in the OECD without its urban economies. And it COULD be doing far better, likeTexas, which is directly applicable as a comparison.

Texas' population is accommodated in FAR lower density cities than Australia's and those urban economies are far more productive than Australia's, AND have shorter trip-to-work times, AND affordable housing.

I am always bemused by bluster from "Greenie" types, about "economic growth and income not being all that important". But the same people always insist on government spending being kept right up there for welfare and health and education and bureaucracy and subsidies to "Green" industry and McJob "creation" and "indigenous people" and public transport and so on and on. Where do they think the money to pay for all this stuff has to come from?

I can assure Ludwig that a nation's ability to pay for all this stuff will correlate pretty directly to the growth of production of its urban economies. Take the welfarist Scandinavian nations as a classic, classic, CLASSIC starting example.

Phil just what is all this urban economic production? I'm afraid I can't see very much of it going on.

Could it be all this is taking in of each others washing? Or is it the earnings of exported mining & agricultural production, finding it's way into the cities to be wasted there, rather than spent in the regions that actually earned it.

Hasbeen:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Value%20of%20goods%20and%20services%20produced%20by%20Australian%20Industry~240

There's not a lot in there that is NOT "urban". What a pathetic waste of land mass, farming stuff to contribute around 4% to total GDP, while restricting urban land coverage to 0.6% when urban economies are something like 80% of the total economy.

But in exports, it is a different story:

http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade/trade-at-a-glance-2011.html

I suggest this has a lot to do with the effects of growth-containment urban planning on the KINDS of urban businesses that WOULD be exporters. Read "Driving Productivity and Growth in the UK Economy", McKinsey Institute 1998, and "The Flow of Money and Its Impact on Local Economies" by William Fruth. Australia's policy makers should wake up about this.

Read “Foreign Industrial Investment is Reshaping America” by Joel Kotkin. This COULD be Australia too if it got its policies right, i.e. closer to those of the regions in the USA that are attracting international manufacturing and high tech. Goodness knows Australia has the land to burn, to make it competitive with other manufacturing powerhouses around the world, at least on urban land costs and the many flow-on costs involved.

McKinsey suggests in the reference above that powerful cutting edge economic agglomerations like Silicon Valley cannot possibly happen in the UK because of its urban planning system. The same thing is a problem in Australia.

Stupid, Australia, stupid. Even New Zealand manages to export manufactures as a much higher proportion of its total exports. As I already quoted, if NZ had 100 more manufacturing exporters as good as its current top 40, it would be wealthier than Germany and Japan and Sweden. But exporting more mutton, beef, milk, butter, wool, etc would just result in more LOWER income jobs.

But NZ too needs to reform its urban planning system if it is ever to have anything like Silicon Valley

<< Somebody could be rightfully concerned about city congestion, and at the same time support a low-population-growth scenario for the exact same city. >>

YES!!

Hey Pericles, you are not going like this, but you have AGREED WITH ME!

Erm…. you have inadvertently agreed with me, while at the same trying vehemently to oppose everything I say! ( :> /

Yes we can support a LOW population-growth scenario while genuinely working towards improving congestion.

The key point here of course is that a low pop-gr scenario is very different to what we now have in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, etc… and that the switch from the current high pop-gr imposition to a growth rate that could be called low is of vital importance in attempts to address congestion.

Well done. You’ve seen the light at last!

Oh uh….

No you haven’t. You consider our current near-record-high rate of population growth to be a ‘low-population-growth scenario’, don’t you!

Well, once again, here in the real world, considering our current growth rate compared to the growth rate throughout the history of this country, comparing it to that of other developed countries around the world (but not to third-world countries), looking in a realistic way at congestion in our major cities and what we can do about it…

…in other words, looking at it all in holistic manner…

…there is no way in the world that you can say that we currently have a low pop-gr rate or that our major cities with the worst congestion have low pop-gr rates….. or that the current pop-gr rate in these cities isn’t the biggest factor of all in worsening congestion and in countering our efforts to deal with it.

How about supporting what you say and coming on board with us poppos and sustainabilityists and start lobbying for a much-reduced immigration intake so that we can achieve a low population growth rate for our congested cities!

Cmawwwn!

Phil, you really are dwelling in a world of theory and NOT in the real world!

Yes sure, urban economic growth has the POTENTIAL to achieve great things! Just like a full-on decentralisation effort has the potential to alleviate congestion, even within a rapid-growth scenario.

But in the real world, they just ain’t gunna happen!

The best we could hope for is to achieve a small fraction of the maximum potential for these things.

We’ve got to do what is achievable. And one of the most achievable, politically tenable and significant things that can be done towards addressing congestion is….

….wait for it….

….to reduce immigration to bet zero or at least to a much lower level.

You shouldn’t be talking about starry-eyed maximum potential. Realistic potential is what you need to work on!

If you did this, you’d have an entirely different outlook. You wouldn’t be talking about decentralisation as being THE solution to congestion, you’d be talking about it as being one factor within an entirely different approach to the problem. And you certainly wouldn’t be espousing an urban-based economy as being the answer to our economic woes.

You're a veritable bundle of contradictions, Ludwig.

>>Yes we can support a LOW population-growth scenario while genuinely working towards improving congestion<<

Shortly before this, you were saying...

>>...it IS INDEED a matter of being either genuinely concerned about congestion or being a high-population-growth advocate<<

Forget about whether or not I agree with you.

Try and work out how you might "INDEED" be able to agree with yourself.

This single-issue fanaticism is not allowing you to think straight any longer. Time to reassess whether you really should drag every single topic into the black hole of your obsession.

Pericles, when you get around to it, could you point out the apparent contradiction. Either this, or admit that there is NO contradiction here, if you would be so kind.

No rush. Take the whole weekend if you like.

Here’s a clue – I mention low population growth in the first quote and high population growth in the second quote. They are very different things, especially when we go from high pop growth to low pop growth as part of a strategy to deal with congestion (and all sorts of other population-pressure issues).

So find a contradiction somewhere there if you can. Good hunting!

Oh, and if you can come up with any contradictions in anything that I have written on this thread, or on this forum over the last seven years for that matter, then throw them up in your next post too if you would. Cheers.

Phil from NZ,

You assume that we can just go on with business as usual, that the future will be like the present. At first you supported Julian Simon, who was famous for saying that there effectively are no limits to growth. You then admitted, on seeing the evidence, that limits to growth do exist, but claimed they are effectively so far in the future that we don't have to worry about them. Have another look at that Global Footprint Network atlas, the parts where they talk about us being in 40% environmental overshoot, even with the present global population. This refers to the fact that we are using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. You might feel great while you are running through an inheritance or lottery winnings, but eventually the money will be gone. There aren't enough resources to give everyone in even the present global population a decent quality of life, and several billion extra people are in the pipeline, just from demographic momentum, even if the fertility rate drops down to replacement level tomorrow, everywhere on earth.

With reference to greenhouse gas emissions, if there were a cheap, safe. easy solution, we would already be applying it, as we did with the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer from damage by chlorofluorocarbons. This article from Nature (with an open link below it) on a safe operating space for humanity identifies 9 separate thresholds representing different resource/environment threats. We have already crossed 3 of them and another 4 are approaching fast.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

Note that this is from Nature, probably the foremost peer-reviewed science journal in the world, not a fringe Greenie website. A lot of the past societies that collapsed did so because they damaged their environmental resource base, often in the interests of raising production in the short term (as with Pacific Islanders who dynamite reefs to catch more fish) or let safety margins get too thin. Populating up to the maximum we can feed with a relatively favourable climate and cheap, easily available fertisers is just plain stupid.

(cont'd)

But of course, Ludwig.

>>Pericles, when you get around to it, could you point out the apparent contradiction. Either this, or admit that there is NO contradiction here, if you would be so kind. No rush. Take the whole weekend if you like.<<

It will be my pleasure.

Your starting point:

>>...which is more important to you – effectively dealing with congestion or allowing our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight?<<

Your proposition is that EITHER you can deal with congestion, OR you must allow population to rapidly increase with no end in sight.

Seemed a little harsh. But under questioning, you elaborate that this is in fact your position, that these are the only choices available:

>>...it IS INDEED a matter of being either genuinely concerned about congestion or being a high-population-growth advocate<<

This leaves no valid alternative scenarios available to you. Such as being concerned about congestion, but at the same time being able to advocate low population growth. This, according to the strict instructions you have given us in the... shall we call it the "INDEED" position, is inadmissible.

But lo, what light through yonder Ludwig breaks?

The inadmissible appears now to be... admissible!

Your second position:

>>Yes we can support a LOW population-growth scenario while genuinely working towards improving congestion<<

Oh dear.

Wikipedia (yes, I know. But I don't have all weekend) describes this as follows:

"In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other."

Egg, meet Ludwig's face.

Red, isn't it.

Have a great weekend.

(cont'd)

Of course Australia could support a much bigger population on a Bangladeshi standard of living, but why should we sit still for it? I have linked to the 2006 Productivity Commission report into immigration, which showed that per capita economic benefits from mass migration are trivial (see graph on p.155) and mostly distributed to the owners of capital and the migrants themselves, while wages are depressed for everyone else (see the graph on p. 147). Our current 1.5% population growth rate will double the population in 46 years (hardly moderate), so it isn't surprising that our goverment can't keep up with the infrastructure requirements, even though it is taking a bigger share of GDP than in the 1970s when tertiary education was free and the aged pension wasn't means tested. All that a bigger population means for the average Australian is more competition for jobs, housing, public services, and amenities in a more unequal society

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=620&page=64

This is a high price to pay for making Pericles richer.

There is also a price to pay in terms of the environment. Every additional person means extra pressure on the environment, and Australia already ranks near the bottom of the developed world on environmental management.

http://epi.yale.edu/epi2012/rankings

The government's own State of the Environment and Measuring Australia's Progress reports show every environmental indicator progressively getting worse, apart from urban air quality, where a lot of the pollution has been "offshored" and there are some good technological solutions.

Wow, you threw that together quickly Pericles… and doesn’t it show!

Example 1. NO CONTRADICTION PRESENT!

We CANNOT effectively deal with congestion if we allow our population to rapidly increase with no end in sight.

What is so hard about this for you to understand? And why are you so desperate to label it as a contradiction when it is patently obvious to any readers of this thread that there is no contradiction present?

What is your weird game plan here Pericles? To destroy your credibility entirely in the eyes of all those who are reading this debate??

Example 2. NO CONTRADICTION PRESENT!!

If you are a high population growth advocate, you CANNOT be genuinely concerned about congestion in our major cities!

Now for goodness sake, before you go out for drinkies with your mates on this Friday evening, do wipe that silly looking egg off your face!

Oh, and remember this minor point – high population growth is not the same thing as low population growth.

Now do go out and have a lovely evening with your chums.

And don’t drink too much!

This is getting very silly, Ludwig.

If you are unable to see that there are more possibilities than your straight alternative "either deal with congestion, or love rapid population with no end in sight", then it will take a lot more than my meagre intellect to set you straight.

Maybe someone else, more patient than I, can help you out.

"Ahhh, there is SFA that we can do about it. In fact, I think that our best possible efforts will only result in one thing - drawing out the inevitable a bit longer and increasing the magnitude of the crash."
Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 4 October 2009 9:47:57 AM

Well done Mr Trevor.

Thankyou for scrolling back through my old posts, or for remembering this significant statement for more than three years. I’m impressed!

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9515#152088

.

Come on Pericles, you can do better than that!