Not at all, Ludwig.

>>But Pericles, they’re outside the city! And they are soooo different to the city environment!!<<

They are a part of city living, not separate from it. One of the joys of living in Sydney is the proximity of all that green stuff, all those birdy things, and a range of idyllic walks that make the heart sing. The rocks, though, you can keep. Waste of space. Although the Three Sisters are quite pretty, I suppose.

>>So you have been to Royal Botanic Gardens?<<

'Knoath. I can even see it from where I am sitting right now. Lovely spot. Nice trees. Noisy bats.

>>But you haven’t been to a nude beach but somehow know that they are predominantly patronised by middle-aged men.<<

Ok, that part was largely hearsay. Although I will submit this link in evidence... possibly a little nsfw, if your boss is looking for a reason to fire you.

http://www.sydneynudistinfo.com/sydney-nudist-beaches.html

>>...more would do it if they were helped financially to get out of the drab, grey, depressing, congested, crime-ridden, horrible city, and into wonderful leafy green unoppressed, unflustered, unhurried surrounds!<<

As I said, it would definitely take bribery to make it happen. But have you actually done any sums that give you a clue as to the scale of subsidy necessary?

Try working through an example, just to bring the discussion away from dark satanic mills, and into the real world of commerce.

Let's say I currently run a successful small company of a thousand people. Turnover $200m p.a., net profit $8m. We are based in the CBD, so my staff travel here from all directions. They are a typical demographic spread; let's say 200 are under-thirty; six hundred are between 30 and 50, 80% of them are married, 70% of them married-with-children, 60% of them with children at school. The remaining 200 are over fifty, three-quarters of whom are empty-nesters.

You are Fatty O'Barrell, and you want me to move the entire shooting match to Lesser WoopWoop - I'll leave you to pick the spot.

What figure would need to be on the cheque?

<< They are a part of city living, not separate from it. One of the joys of living in Sydney is the proximity of all that green stuff, all those birdy things, and a range of idyllic walks that make the heart sing. >>

Wonderful! Pericles, you do continue to surprise me (:>)

So then, what have you got against regional centres? They have the same sort of mix…..only better!!

Why do you think people would be loathe to go there if they were incentivised into making such a move, and loathe to stay there after that?

I just don’t get that part of your argument.

Tree- and sea-change movements show that there are many people who want to get out of the cities and go to greener environs and nicer climes. But I bet far fewer actually do it than what desire to do it!

<< 'Knoath. I can even see it from where I am sitting right now. >>

Wow, you really are right in the guts of that massive morbid metropolis!!

<< …have you actually done any sums that give you a clue as to the scale of subsidy necessary? >>

No. I’m just talking in broad principles. I could ask the same sort of question of you – do you have any idea of the financial burden in NSW budgetary terms that population growth places on Sydney each year, which necessitates the building of new infrastructure and the duplication of services? Do you know how much money could be redirected into the improvement of existing infrastructure and services if this demand for new stuff was stopped or halved or otherwise considerably reduced??

No of course you don’t. And no of course I don’t have any idea of the financial side of things…other than to say, that if financial incentives for people to get out of the city do work, then a whole lot of funding will be freed up by way of reduced demand for new infrastructure and services.

Gee, I wish I was old Fatty O’Barrellguts. I’d have the place fixed up no time!!

Nothing at all, Ludwig.

>>So then, what have you got against regional centres?<<

I am sure the people who live there enjoy living there. There is also a solid reason for their being sited where they are - supporting a mining industry, such as Lithgow or Newcastle, or as a focus for a farming community such as Dubbo. I have absolutely nothing against them, or the people who live there.

What I do disagree with, though, is the transplantation of people from a city to a country town, using taxpayers money as an "incentive", for no better purpose than social engineering. However worthy you may believe the concept to be, that is what it comes down to.

I see it as a very similar process to the creation of a "model town", which was a post-war fad in England. The 1946 Labour Government passed the New Towns Act, with all the best social-engineering intentions. If you would like to check on the results, take a look at Basildon, one of the earliest, and now firmly entrenched as home of Essex culture. And if you are unsure about Essex culture, Google TOWIE.

The next example would be Bracknell - and I think this would be a concern to any country town that you chose for your own transplant experiment. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia:

"The site was originally a village cum small town in the civil parish of Warfield in the Easthampstead Rural District. Very little of the original Bracknell is left."

How did the inhabitants of "the original Bracknell" feel, do you think?

New Towns were an exercise in the use of taxpayers money to avoid rebuilding cities, and instead creating new centres of population away from them. Nice idea, but the results were less than ideal, from any perspective. Which is why you don't hear the Labour Party at election-time boasting about having been responsible for creating Basildon. They're too embarrassed.

Enjoy your rural life, Ludwig, as I enjoy my city. It is a personal choice, made not only by people, remember, but by businesses who need those people.

<< What I do disagree with, though, is the transplantation of people from a city to a country town, using taxpayers money as an "incentive", for no better purpose than social engineering. >>

How can you say; ‘for no better purpose’?

The reasons are palpable!

How can you condone the currently terrible management regime of squeeze-em-in, regardless of overstressed infrastructure, thus reducing the quality of life of current residents and necessitating huge ongoing expenses on duplicating infrastructure as well as vainly trying to improve existing infrastructure…. and services...blah, blah...?

I mean, what is happening in Sydney is nothing short of absurd!!

And it can be called social engineering just as validly as attempts to redistribute the population somewhat. Or perhaps antisocial engineering would be a better term!!

Now, throughout the history of this country, we have had incentivisation to move to smaller towns, be they mining towns, agricultural centres or coastal communities. The incentives have been jobs, lifestyle, environment, availability of land and housing, the costs thereof, advertising and promotion of these places, etc, etc.

And people have been actively prevented from moving to other areas by the lack of approvals for land releases, the preservation of areas as national parks, agricultural land, heritage sites, urban parkland, etc, etc.

All of this sort of thing is social engineering if you like to call it that. And it is all completely fair and reasonable governmental management of population distribution.

So I am not talking about anything drastically new here, Pericles.

What "terrible management regime", Ludwig?

>>How can you condone the currently terrible management regime of squeeze-em-in, regardless of overstressed infrastructure, thus reducing the quality of life of current residents and necessitating huge ongoing expenses on duplicating infrastructure as well as vainly trying to improve existing infrastructure…. and services...blah, blah...?<<

Blah blah, indeed. Who is "squeezing"? You seem to imagine some kind of cackling monster, herding the poor and weak into the cities against their will. Instead of which, people are choosing to live here because that's where the jobs are. And the jobs are here because the services are here. And the services (and culture, by the way) are here because of the simple economies of scale that a city creates.

If things were as bad as you say, surely masses of folk would be voting with their feet? And I don't count the retirees who choose to spend their last years in rural solitude as sea-changers or tree-changers. They are - economically speaking only, of course - parasites, and you are welcome to them.

And where is the duplication of infrastructure you keep bringing up? Is it more expensive somehow to extend existing infrastructure in the outskirts of a city, than build new stuff from scratch in Lesser WoopWoop? How does that work?

>>And people have been actively prevented from moving to other areas by the lack of approvals for land releases, the preservation of areas as national parks, agricultural land, heritage sites, urban parkland, etc, etc.<<

Aha! So you would ride roughshod over the will of the people who prefer to keep their environment out of the hands of land developers, and who would rather maintain their surroundings of "national parks, agricultural land, heritage sites, urban parkland". Instead, you would insist that they make room for thousands of your forced refugees from the overcrowded cities.

That's not nice.

But do tell. How would you change their mind? "Do a Bracknell", and simply pass a law that says "sorry folk, we're going to build you out, in the name of...?

In the name of what? Progress? Or social engineering?

<< What "terrible management regime", Ludwig? >>

Oh dear Pericles, we are getting nowhere here.

Right back to the basics of our discussion we go! Why do we have to go back there? Isn’t it bleedingly obvious?

What is it about my elucidation of the terrible management regime, that you’ve quoted from my last post and otherwise read in my previous posts on this thread that you don’t understand?

Have a listen to this presentation by Professor Ian Lowe, especially his comments on infrastructure regarding population growth in the big cities around the middle of this talk:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australia27s-population-debate/4197352

More on population and infrastructure from John Coulter:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/evidence-behind-queenslands-cost-of-living-fears-20120409-1wl8d.html

<< Is it more expensive somehow to extend existing infrastructure in the outskirts of a city, than build new stuff from scratch in Lesser WoopWoop? >>

What’s this ‘from scratch’ business?

I advocate adding population to existing towns, instead of the big cities, under a stable population regime or at least a regime of much lower national population growth. Otherwise there’s no point – we’d continue to have rapid growth in the big cities even if we did manage to get a lot of people to settle in smaller centres.

The cost of building new infrastructure and services would presumably not be significantly different in the city and in smaller centres. But it would cost more in the big cities to fix badly overstressed I & S than it would to deal with much more minor stresses to existing I & S in smaller centres.

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