Well, they pay for all redevelopment and rezoning. Developers have just one vote regardless of the size of the bank balance and how deep their pockets are.

Our cities are already too big and gridlocked. While until COVID, rural and regional towns emptied out.

Endlessly postponed rapid rail would've allowed brand new towns and cities (affordable housing) to spring up along the line with new industrial estates.

The elephant in the room is energy and its prohibitive cost! Which impacts negatively on everything, including building materials and construction.

Rapid rai can be rolled out for virtually no cost, given the sale of rezoned urban land will pay for most of it. Likewise affordable energy.

Taking other folks nuclear waste will result in annual millions. Ending fossil fuel subsidies, will liberate annual billions.

Allowing a visionary government to start to produce MSR nuclear waste burners where it is mostly unspent fuel. Thereby reducing the half-life to just 300 years and a vastly less toxic material.

The real limit to population numbers is potable water. Myriad small upland dams that force billions of litres of rainwater into the landscape could allow population numbers to be doubled.

All paid for with the above annual income and savings.
Cant died in a cornfield over a century ago. Wont is alive and kicking, as is abysmal ignorance!
Alan B

Coates is just talking his book. The people that fund Grattan benefit from massive levels of migration. So Coates points to the supply side (planning restrictions) rather than the demand side (massive levels of migration).

So long as people like to reproduce like rabbits in order to keep their genetic line going, but are unwilling to die like rabbits, so long as sheer human numbers force most to live in squeezed up cities, this problem (and many others) has no solution - one side or the other (and usually both) will just have to suffer unjustly.

With that, property owners must remember that nobody even owes them a road next to their land, let alone parking spaces and a nice environment.

Wannabe property owners, on the other hand, must remember that they have no right to disturb existing property owners and hinder their ability to enjoy their own land peacefully, especially during the building process (noise, dust, etc.) and that aspect was sadly not mentioned in the article.