“Ludwig: Whether people like it or not, we're not going to stop human population growth.”

Shorbe, I guess we will just to vehemently disagree on this.

In Australia we can very easily direct ourselves towards a stable population. And with the rise of awareness of big-picture environmental issues, the need for true sustainability, and the advent of OLO and the internet in general, this message WILL spread and take strong root in our political arena…soon.

Of course, efforts to stabilise population on the national, state and regional levels has everything to do with traffic congestion and a million other worsening factors in our lives. It is just completely nonsensical to put all our efforts into alternative transport, alternative fuel sources, etc… while just sitting back and accepting that a rapid increase in pressure on these vehicles, infrastructure and energy sources will continue unendingly.

Wildcat, a similar sort of increase in traffic congestion and decline in many aspects of quality of life has taken place in Cairns and Townsville over the last couple of decades. And still the mayors tell us that growth is good and only good… and faster growth is better!

Decentralisation is definitely not the answer.

Ballarat is too close to Melbourne to constitute effective decentralisation. It is plain old urban sprawl because the key engine of economic growth and wealth concentration, the government, is still in Melbourne. So people will still commute from Ballarat and exacerbate congestion costs. And these costs will then be incorporated into the cost of delivering both government services and commercial goods and services.

But form a new state of Western Victoria, with capital at Ararat, and a new engine of economic growth and wealth concentration will shift some of the growth in people and their cars to the new capital. And that new capital will be able to deliver government services to its people and businesses with only a fraction of the congestion costs built in.

Add another capital at Wangaratta, and another at Sale, and the unsustainable edge will be taken off the growth rate of Melbourne. Melbourne will have bought the time that is needed to actually solve some of the congestion problems, not just postpone them. And their costs of delivering government services will stop spinning out of control. Who knows, service may even improve.

Well wouldn’t that be great! Burden Wangaratta and Sale and Ararat…. and Lakes Entrance and Warrnambool and Horsham and Mildura, with Melbourne’s overflow.

Well what a top reason for wanting these towns to be regional capitals!

Encourage rapid growth in these towns with all its negative effects (oh and a few positive ones, no doubt)… and meanwhile not significantly relieve the pressure on Melbourne at all… because it is just so much bigger, and so far pressured beyond transport infrastructure capability now.

Nope. This sort of decentralisation is just not an answer to anything… unless it goes into boosting flagging economies in small centres that have suffered population decline… and is then stoppable at a predetermined optimum level.

The answer lies with overall limits to growth.

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There’s something interesting here in my old foe Perseus’ comments;

“….the unsustainable edge will be taken off the growth rate of Melbourne.”

YES!! Population growth at anything like the current is indeed UNSUSTAINABLE!!

This is a revelation coming from one the harshest critics of my comments on population stabilisation and sustainability matters.

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Something of a related nature that is right up your alley Persy: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=29

Ludwig: Australia's population isn't growing out of control. We have birth rates below sustainable levels and immigration is quite under control. The problem is the urban sprawl at the fringes of the big cities, not the numbers of people. Having said that, urban sprawl is largely a part of the Australian way of life because we don't have an apartment dwelling psyche. I wouldn't want us to either.

It's quite possible for our suburban lifestyle to be sustainable and have slight population growth, but we have to get off this notion of all roads leading to Rome so to speak. If someone had any vision within local governments (or a group thereof), they'd create new suburbs so that they were largely sustainable in all ways, and so that a lot of what people needed was nearby. It makes more sense to have good planning (and good transport) rather than to have great transport to make up for poor planning. However, as Perseus pointed out, a large part of the problem is that we have states (even Victoria) with massive land areas, millions of people, and politicians and bureaucrats tucked away in one little corner who often have no idea of, or concern for, anyone or anything more than three blocks away in the CBD in terms of location, or one election away in terms of time. You want to talk about government control, regulation and planning being the panacea, yet state governments have no idea about anything. That's not entirely their fault -- how could anyone be responsive to the variety of needs of millions?

Also, regarding regional areas, you have a sort of parochialism that borders on xenophobia. You talk as if the country is for country people and no one else has any right to move there. People from the city don't move to the country just to be mean and stuff it up for people already there. Why wouldn't or shouldn't they move there? Also, if regional areas play their cards right, it can lead to a renaissance for dying areas.

Shorbe and Perseus, the original article was in relation to road congestion and I'm simply letting you know what's happened to Ballarat. I moved out years ago when I realised what was coming. Unfortunately, I still have to travel daily to work in the place. It's a nightmare and simply because of in increase in pop of around 20-25,000 extra people. Can't wait until it's 180,000 as predicted by 2030! The biggest problem with towns like Ararat, Ballarat, Bendigo and others is that they hang on to their heritage culture for grim death. These are not truly progressive cities. If they were, they'd consider building freeway over the retched places so we could get away from them faster on our way to other centers of work....Melbourne, but no. They prefer to build the population with no regard to future crowding problems and all in the name of greedy consumerism. Shorbe, if our population isn't growing out of control, how come we can't walk around for bloody people everywhere? We could 30 years ago. Humans World wide are like the famed "bacteria in a Petri dish" and we don't have the brains of bacterium, therefore we'll breed ourselves out of existance. Sorry Ludwig. I don't see a cure for the bacteria.

It is all a question of comparative economic, social and environmental cost. Add 400,000 people (10%) to Melbourne over two decades and each new person will impose congestion costs on the existing residents of about $8,000 a year. Current expenditure per person by state governments is only $6,000 each year so this is a very significant uncosted expense.

Encourage 200,000 of them to live in three new regional capitals and their surrounds and the cost of settling each batch of 70,000 (3,500 x 20 years) will be met entirely by the settlers. They will impose minimal congestion costs on the existing residents because the character and scale of the changes will be more easily managed.

Congestion costs really don't start to kick in until an urban population reaches a million people so the net savings to the whole population of the shifting of 200,000 people is in the order of $1.6 billion a year. And these savings are far in excess of any likely duplication costs from additional state administrations.

Here in Brisbane, the population concentration is about to reach the point where most of the Bay is closed for recreational fishing. If we had three seperate states instead of one, the population pressure would have been spread over three coastlines so we could all continue to enjoy the very benefits that attracted us here in the first place.

The purpose of a state is not to create an ever bigger, ever uglier and more expensive and unlivable metropolis. Effective decentralisation is the key to maintaining economic growth while limiting metropolitan growth.