Sydney's Apocalypse now: fear and loathing in Bondi jungle

We have seen earlier that Centennial Park is now run by people driven to make money by having noisy rock concerts, marathons, fun runs, children's entertainment or anything else which makes money so the poor Park can survive.

Once again, the Park's website talks of community consultation, working with the community, listening to local voices and similar. There is even a Noise Management Plan.

But what happens on the day (as the footballers say) is a different matter. "Sorry, the wind blew the noise right inside your house" , or "We didn't expect that the lead guitarist would turn the sound up…" and so on.

We are talking about an area in which clearly, more and more people want to live. As one estate agent told me, "people get off the plane every day and come to me wanting housing, and I can tell you, they don't want to live in Mt. Druitt" (a suburb west of Parramatta in which most eastern suburbs residents are unlikely to have set foot). So we get worse traffic. Sunday as a quiet day is long gone. Instead we are getting traffic jams so bad the streets going towards Bondi are jammed, as far back as Paddington and Woollahra.

More people, more traffic, more demand for housing, more space needed in schools and hospitals. Growth is outstripping the work of planners and policy makers. Of course, as we learn from the Independent Commission Against Corruption, planning is subverted by property developers and the brown-paper envelopes full of cash that they use to help politicians make decisions.

Where does all this lead?

Let's have a quick stab at future prospects for this part of the inner city.

First, we are packing more and more people into a limited space. Housing prices will continue to rise. Arguments persist about why this is so. Foreigners driving up prices? Investors cashing in on negative gearing? People just wanting to live near amenities? Many reasons are being debated.

But the social consequences will be huge, as I've tried to suggest.

Second, Sydney is screaming for decent infastructure. State Governments have tried to pull the wool over our eyes. We've had tons of reports and announcements and blueprints. A second airport debated and small libraries full of reports on where it might be. A new line with trains running ten times an hour? you name it. Much hoo-ha has been made about new light rail on already choked streets in Randwick, Paddington, and George Street. But new 'heavy' rail lines have not been built. And despite much criticism, the Abbott Government is funding roads, not rail.

Sydneyneeds an extensive underground, just as do cities of comparable size: Paris, London, New York City. Everyone is wasting time and money sitting in traffic, on basically the same road and rail system we had in the 1930s, give or take a few tunnels, a freeway or two, and the airport line which costs the best part of $10 per person per trip.

Third, schools will face more and more pressures brought on by more kids in less space. One sad fact is that State schools solve problems by building demountables in playgrounds, ensuring that kids have less space to exercise. A number of NSW State Governments have foolishly sold off precious land, or whole schools, when enrolments fell. But the demand for education is elastic. Meanwhile (as we saw above) Catholic schools are buying more land. And elite private schools can boast that they offer kids much more space to move in. Some, like Scots College in Sydney, take boys off-campus to rampage around in the bush and learn in the open air. This can be justified in a number of ways in terms of increasingly over-protective parents, or just accounting for male biology and surges of testosterone, as Catalyst argued last week on ABC TV.