Wendell Cox is still pushing to increase the urban sprawl onto the last of our well watered agricultural land that is better suited to agriculture than land in irrigation areas further from population centres.

Ignoring the loss of fertile well watered agricultural land what about the public transport provision for the urban fringe dwellers?

Transport costs and travel times are the tyranny of outer urban dwellers with many employers of low paid labour discriminating against workers who have long travel times.

would low income home owners be better served by being imprisoned in outer urban suburbs with low capital growth or by having access to low cost apartments closer to jobs, transport etc

Why is all the talk about supply-side solutions? What about demand? If you stop pumping up the population you will solve the housing crisis (and affordability crisis) in short order. Wendell Cox also does not seem to believe that oil supplies are threatened even though the International Energy Agency now sees serious oil supply issues from 2012 onwards. When the oil shortages hit the urban fringe land will have a much, much higher agricultural value and the people caught on the urban fringe will be severely affected by transport costs. Wendell is the author of "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life". What do you think the quality of life will be Wendell when people out in the sprawl have to choose between spending money to eat or to commute (if they have a job)? Go back to the USA where you belong and where you can enjoy the collapse of the urban sprawl as so vividly desribed weekly by James Howard Kunstler at www.kunstler.com

Not enough housing? Too many people!

The US is the land of urban sprawl, go visit some of the major cities in the US to see what state their centres are in is that what we want for OZ. IMO we should be making housing unaffordable in the outer suburbs of our major cities. We have got plenty of land that is not suitable for farming why are we bulldozing market gardens to build housing estates it’s madness

This guy should probably have listened in Economics 101. Does he really think there is a shortage of land? Thousands of hectares are currently land banked by developers who are waiting for the market to pick up to develop housing estates.

Of course land zoned for development is much higher in the UK than rural land. If you allowed more rural land to be developed it would become instantly more expensive as well.

Fool.

Again the incorrigible Wendell Cox complains about restrictions on the OUTWARD expansion of cities, but says nothing about restrictions on UPWARD expansion. I have already dealt with that issue at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8259#129611 .

I should note that Anthony Richards has no such double standard. In the speech quoted by Cox, Richards said:

"But it is also the case that supply-side factors matter, and here I define these broadly to include factors affecting the ability to build new housing on the city fringe, factors affecting the ability to expand supply closer to city centres, and factors such as community and transport infrastructure that influence the feasibility and desirability of living in different places."

And later:

"Indeed, perhaps the best chance of boosting housing construction on a sustainable basis may be to seek to reduce impediments on the supply side that are either boosting the cost of building new housing on the fringes of our cities or are constraining the ability to build more housing closer to the centres of our major cities."