Careful there Chris, your communistic streak is showing. The last thing we need is idiots in an office with planning department on the door. I have yet to see them get even a single thing right.

The UK population is spread because of it's piddle little counties, with tens of thousands of bureaucrats in each. They are doing things like checking peoples garbage to see it is in the right bin, or that the bin was not put out too early. They even have spies sneaking around checking what TV station people are watching. Russia never got so bad. The rest of the population is there to cater to them at work & play.

Their ridiculous bureaucracy is sending them broke, it is when, not if their system fails completely.

The simple answer is stop immigration of any sort, & let anyone who wants to subdivide the land they have title to, to do so.

The only other requirement is to sack all dictatorial bureaucrats, who think they know what everyone should do, i.e. the planners. Of course a few hundred thousand pen pushers from the bureaucracy & academic sector would be more use to the public on the dole, where they could do less damage.

There has been a huge outbreak of these developments here in Perth. We quite often get visitors from the east come to visit, guess where they stay? I drive up Hay street on Sunday morning and what do I see? Loads of people with bags waiting for a bus or taxi. A large number of the CBD units are being used as short stay apartments managed by? The Perth City council has woken to this, but is not sure what to do about it. It isn't illegal to rent your apartment, and it brings people into the city. Only problem is everything shuts at five, and anything which stays open afterwards is overpriced and not going to attract the budget conscious who rent the apartments.

>Let anyone divide the land they have title to to do so<

Always providing the intending developer, supplies and installs the necessary infrastructure; and is not at the end of an already clogged arterial roadway.

Look, critical minutes count when someone is having a heart attack or a stroke.

I have to agree with Chis; and it really is time we started catering to the common folk, and not to the do nothing developers.

But particularly those who buy rural land on the edge of town then slice off pieces of it.

If they paid $10.00 an acre, how can they justify $10,000.00 an acre, just because they threw fences around 5 acre chunks of it! Alongside an existing road, and as battle axe blocks to maximize the return!

Subdivide and be dammed, until all we have left are postage stamp size blocks surrounded by a vast empty inland!

We need to thoroughly decentralize and return the notion of a fair go!

Until now, we invariably created a world where the next generation were better off than those who preceded them!

This is the first generation that has gotten that in reverse, and arguably just because some extraordinarily greedy old men, really do believe the world owes them a living.

And I'd follow Canada, and simply prohibit non resident foreigners from buying any real estate!

And I like the NZ example that only allowed third generation Kiwis to buy farmland!

What do we gain if we force the price of land so high, we can only ever aspire to become tenants in our own land; which by the way Has, is the communist example!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty our present zoning laws are nothing but a rort, overseen by a bunch of town planning twits, all brainwashed by the same academic process in our universities. They want to make Oz a huge Copenhagen, full of bicycle riding peasants.

I live on 20 acres, 25 kilometres from 6 different towns, right in the middle of nowhere. Although it is riverfront, with an irrigation licence, it is commercially worthless, & was quite cheap. I bought it so the kids could have their horses economically. Today I have one old horse wandering around it.

Two of my kids would like to live here, with their wives, have their horses, & raise their families. Due to the bureaucratic stupidity of planners, I am not allowed to split off a block for either or each of them. At the same time I am not allowed to have even a second dwelling on the property.

This despite the fact that one kilometre away, 300 acres is subdivided into 1.25 acre blocks, & just 7 Kilometres away a 50,000 satellite city, Yarrabilba, is being developed with those ridiculous postage stamp size lots. Our planners are happy, [or well paid] to approve a slum in the making, but not some decentralised living.

It would be nice to believe any of this was good town planning, however it appears like a good way for councillors & town planners to share in the spoils, & guarantee their benefactors that they will face no competition, from little people splitting off a block or two.

Hasbeen,

Accusing a former state vice president of the DLP of having a “communistic streak” because he does not support squashing people up is just weird.

Claiming that the population spread in the UK is the result of the existence of counties is also weird.

Rhrosty,

I don’t know which state you are in, but it is not possible in Victoria to buy rural land and just subdivide it. We have had an urban growth boundary, with a clear distinction between rural and urban land, since 1971. The boundary has been extended several times, but the concept is clear.

We had the option in the 1960s of making Melton, Whittlesea, Lilydale, Hastings and a few other places cities separate from Melbourne, but we did not do so. We can do the same thing today with population centres further away from Melbourne.

Chris I consider it communistic to try to force people to live where they don't want to live, with draconian policies. We would not have the high prices we now have if governments were not profiteering on land development.

In a democracy government should make the things they want more attractive, not try to coerce people by making others too expensive. Don't forget, even if Melbourne is over crowded, you still have to have check out chicks & truck drivers able to live in the place for it to work.

If you want an area developed, just open subdivision, without a huge government take, or idiot planning restrictions, then stand back, or you'll be killed in the rush.

When we have planners telling people they can't have windows facing the view, because the sun will come in, it really is time to line the planners up against a wall in front of a firing squad. That sort of attitude is also communistic in the extreme.