Eclipse, no I am not against New-Urbanism, for I know it suits some
people to live that way. I just don't think that town planners
should make it compulsory and I dispute the fact that village kind
of suburbia cannot be energy efficient. I think the market will sort
it out as energy prices change, real estate values change and
developers take notice of what different people actually want in
different places and according to their lifestyles.

The danger is that when it comes to cheaper social welfare housing,
that our Govts do what has been done around the world for cheaper
social welfare housing, ie large apartment blocks which are little
more then human zoos, with their associated problems.

As to lamb, NZ lamb like Aussie lamb, is produced by them eating
grass, clover etc. In Europe you have snow for months, indoor
supervised lambing etc. They eat huge volumes of grain and fodder,

all burning oil to produce. As with road trains, when you move large
volumes of freight with 50'000 tonne ships, the actual fuel used
per kg is negligable, compared to what that animal and its mother
ate, month after month.

My prediction is that as fuel prices increase, freight logistics
well done, will become a huge business. The town nearest to where
I live, would have 6 or 8 couriers a day drive through, all
small trucks, usually half loaded, going home empty. Then we have
road trains carting grain to the ports, coming home empty. It
makes no sense at all, but the potential for savings is enormous,
once higher fuel prices enforce them.

Eclipse Now, 'correctly designed' or not, multi-unit housing is inherently more expensive to develop and build on a per square metre basis, and hence, only relatively wealthy (and therefore generally highly consumptive) households can afford to buy/rent it; these are fundamental facts of property development. If anything, it will be even more expensive on the other side of your millenarianist paradigm shift. (BTW, many of the projects you have cited, while worthy, are decidely NOT new urbanist. Don't get too caught up in the marketing hype of a US architects' booster movement largely out of place here.)

Australia has a conservative estimate of 100,000 contaminated sites in cities and regional areas across the nation and the cost of cleaning up these sites is estimated to exceed $8 billion. Who's paying?

Four recent examples in Sydney:

1. The former Defence Naval Stores site (19.62 ha) on the northern shores of Parramatta River at Ermington. In November 2006, consent was granted for residential redevelopment of the site by stages. Site remediation is required to remediate various types of heavy metal and hydrocarbon contaminants (NSW DoP, 2008a).

2. The former Carlton & United Brewery site (5.8-hectare) on the western edge of the Sydney CBD. The redevelopment concept plan was approved in February 2007 to provide office space, apartments and a 5,400 square metre community park. Certain parts of the site were affected by petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). (NSW DoP, 2008b).

3. Residential development at Precinct C (6,795m2), Rhodes Peninsula. The site comprised reclaimed land formed by filling materials supplied by the former chemical manufacturer Union Carbide (Orica.) The backfill materials are so toxic that remediation must be completed before any construction certificate is released. The redevelopment project was approved in April 2008 (NSW DoP, 2008c).

4: Orica needs to work non-stop for 30 years to clean up the toxic groundwater at Botany Bay (Peatling, 2004), HOWEVER:

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:JN6Ia75qQLAJ:www.smh.com.au/news/environment/botany-cleanup-may-take-a-century/2008/11/26/1227491636580.html+sydney+municipal+hazardous+waste+contamination+2008&cd=34&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

5. The SA government announced that taxpayers had paid and initial $52 million to acquire a site at Bowden (contaminated by more than a century of industrial use) where it plans to build 1500 medium and high-density apartments, shops and commercial developments.

According to Professor Ravi Naidu Managing Director of CRC CARE each individual generates 776 kilograms of waste per person per year and this waste also contains about 20 kilograms of hazardous waste.

I have a good deal of information on how the multi-million dollar landfill operators, resource recovery and hazardous waste industries are “managing” the disposal and “recycling” of Australia’s burgeoning municipal and industrial waste and it’s not for the faint-hearted but avaricious governments and growth merchants rejoice and are happy in their work.

As soon as one specious argument is demolished another is raised.

With regard to electric trams: They are too slow (in my experience in city centres they only travel at twice walking pace) and are very limited in the destinations they serve.

Green sources currently can only supply a trickle of power. It is nonsense to say they can "easily supply" our power needs.

I do not know of any large modern city where walking is the main mode of transport. People travel to a huge variety of destinations that a great city provides - that is the reason for its existence. This structure generates the large variegated pool of jobs and labour that prevent us from living in the abject poverty characteristic of bygone ages. Only a tiny fraction of these destinations can be within walking distance.

A previous Planning Director-General advocated Manhattan style living. This did not go down well. Traffic congestion there is severe.

Portland, in spite of spending billions on public transport, has traffic congestion among the worst in the USA. Average peak period travel time approaches 45 minutes. Hardly an exemplary example.

Some young people do like living in city cores. However residence in city cores is usually of short duration. As has been mentioned, living in a unit has been found to be most unsuitable for children and people with children usually prefer single-residential accommodation if they can get it. In general the lower the density, the more do people prefer to live in that area (UMR Omnibus Results, UMR Research, Wellington, March 2009).

A characteristic of an ideological approach seems to be “Please don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up.” The onus is on the high-density proponents to prove their impositions onto unwilling communities are for the greater public good. They need to point to a high-density city with all the virtues they claim. Microcosms as examples prove nothing. Neither does nit picking.

"Green sources currently can only supply a trickle of power. It is nonsense to say they can "easily supply" our power needs."
Oh well, we're stuffed then. Bring Mad Max on, either due to running out of oil (IEA has finally admitted we're close to GLOBAL peak oil)
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/peak-oil-ten-years-away-expert/story-e6freuyi-1225757520051

or because global warming will kick us in the teeth when 1.5 to 2 billion Indians & Chinese run out of drinking water. Bring it on!

"I do not know of any large modern city where walking is the main mode of transport. People travel to a huge variety of destinations that a great city provides - that is the reason for its existence. This structure generates the large variegated pool of jobs and labour that prevent us from living in the abject poverty characteristic of bygone ages. Only a tiny fraction of these destinations can be within walking distance."
Well, true, but there are other transport technologies like rail, with Velib's bike share deal (active in Paris and Lyons and other European destinations) running bike stations either side of the rail journey.

But the main issue for your attention TonyR is it is now *official*: 10 years to world peak oil, and that's according to the IEA not some greenie activist nutter! the retired geologists amongst us will tell you that the IEA is probably about 5 to 10 years out of date and that world oil production actually peaked last September, but I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that we're going to have less oil SOONER rather than later, and we don't have any alternatives that can scale up *in time*, so bring on "Better Place's" electric cars, we'll need *some* of those (16 years to change the fleet), and bring on New Urbanism. Or just buy a pushbike. I don't really care about debating with you TonyR, you're an ideologue, but the PHYSICS of peak oil will work its wonders with our city plans as we struggle to adapt, and that's going to be very interesting to watch.

Eclipse Now, On closer inspection, these village examples you set, seem to be semi-gated, truncated and exclusive style enclaves and the type with very little room for a child's individual persuits outside the dwelling. Do you live in one of these urban villages and what is the actual living advantages apart from the shared recreational space when bringing up your children.