Being serious about cities

The most radical, and potentially most useful, Commonwealth intervention in city development would be for the Government to provide some long-term planning. Unfortunately this is the least likely to happen.

Planning by all authorities would be greatly enhanced if the Commonwealth set out a population policy, in discussion with other parties and the Australian people. With our low birth rate the eventual population we have in any given future year will be entirely a result of government immigration policy. Yet no government sees fit to plan even to the end of next year, except to advocate continuous high growth for no apparent reason other than to generate big donations from property developers.

There are very few areas of policy where the government has such clear and simple control of the future, and yet it pretends such control does not exist. The apparent reason is that the public have a different view on population numbers to the politicians so the politicians don't talk about it. Even the Greens play along with this undemocratic nonsense because they think the most important thing in the world is not the environment but truly massive and continuous intakes of refugees.

But whatever the actual numbers agreed, if a government had the courage to set a population growth plan for the next two decades we could consider the future for cities much more rationally.

It will be interesting to see if all the big talk, by both sides of politics, about creating the future comes to anything more than simply propping up the past.