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The Forum > Article Comments > Food and urban change > Comments

Food and urban change : Comments

By Juris Greste, published 26/11/2009

It could well be that, indirectly, the cost and supply of food could drive changes to the way we live in cities and towns.

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Of course “proximity is a euphemism for the nasty label of density”. Urban planners and their ilk have been trying for generations to squash Australia’s urban dwellers up like Londoners and will use any abstraction they can get their hands on as an argument.

Those who want to destroy the private green gardens of our metropolitan areas act almost as if the sparsely populated 99 percent of the country outside of the capital cities does not exist. In Victoria’s case, 96 per cent of the state is outside of Melbourne’s metropolitan area.

If the entire population of Australia were packed into one place at the current supposedly low population density of Melbourne, more than 99 per cent of the nation would be completely empty of people. If the entire population of Victoria were packed into one place at that density, more than 90 per cent of the state would be completely empty of people.

England manages to fit almost ten times Victoria’s population into an area the same size as the state, but some 43 million of them live outside London. Surely, Australia can accommodate several million more people without turning its metropolitan areas into the “my concrete tower is bigger than yours” jungle that urban planners so love. There are plenty of provincial cities that could expand.

Whatever the limits to our population are, they do not require urban consolidation.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 26 November 2009 10:07:26 AM
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The availability of relatively cheap abundant food is something that we all take for granted. Meanwhile much prime agricultural and horticultural land is being paved over by the ever expanding suburbs.And already has over the past decades.

This reference provides an eye-opening perspective on the "food"-system in the USA. 1. http://www.foodincmovie.com

Yes the population density in the cities of Europe, the UK and Japan too, is much greater than here in Australia.

But these countries import humungous amounts of food and are therefore very vulnerable to any kind of breakdown in the world-wide food supply chains.

They all get much of their food from far away "elsewhere". But what if most of the worlds population hoped to get most of its food from faraway "elsewheres" too?

There would soon be no "elsewheres" left.
Posted by Ho Hum, Friday, 27 November 2009 7:47:24 AM
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