Opposition to forced high-density growing

We are faced with a growing population - the result of the increase of the world population and the Commonwealth Government's immigration policy. Whatever we do, there will be plusses and minuses. The high-density advocates claim it is better to cram us in closer together. But research undeniably shows that in Australia high-density is less sustainable than single-residential living. With high-density living greenhouse emissions per person are much more (additional operational energy and embodied energy use far outway any possible transport savings). Housing costs are also much more. We believe that in a continent-sized country there are much better options available such as sensitive greenfield site development, satellite cities and the rejuvenation of declining country regions. There is no necessity to convert our communities into high-rise slums.

Reports from around the world indicate that opposition to forced high-density is growing.

1. The Sydney Morning Herald of 30 June 2009 reports that nearly half of NSW councils have refused to nominate members to the dictatorial planning panels being set up by the Government. See: http://www.smh.com.au/national/councils-turn-up-their-noses-at-new-planning-panels-20090629-d2in.html
Greg Bloomfield of FairGO has an interesting proposal to make on the composition of planning panels. See below.

2. In Victoria, it is apparent that policies are moving away from high-density. See http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/opposition-to-a-bigger-melbourne-smacks-of-cultural-snobbery-20090624-cwpv.html?page=-1
where the Minister of Planning calls planning critics ideologically opposed to growth suburbs "cultural snobs".

3. In Perth the WA Minister of Planning has announced, couched in carefully constructed phrases, that the previous high-density plan is being abandoned and less onerous plans will be implemented. See http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/urban-sprawl-back-in-style--wa-planning-minister-20090624-cw5x.html

4. The Governor of Texas has vetoed a program to create a new government body that would dictatorially impose high-density. He says policies should be based on the desires of the community. See: http://www.newgeography.com/content/00866-smart-growth-bill-vetoed

5. You may have read about the controversy caused by Prince Charles' intervention in a high-rise project in Britain. Some interesting ramifications can be read in http://www.newgeography.com/content/00864-on-our-knees-prince-charles-vs-lord-rogers
The article states "Local people resent more bodies being crammed into an already overcrowded, teeming and increasingly dehumanized London........ Because (the) development offers the highest density, it ticks all the right boxes as far as the planners are concerned. But for residents, looking at results of cramming on their already limited space, 500 new flats squeezed in does not look so good. "

Meanwhile in New South Wales the Government is relentlessly continuing with its devastation of suburbs. Apart from unsustainability these policies result in some of the highest housing costs in the world. I believe this has been the major factor in the collapse of the NSW economy from being 35% of national GDP to the current 30% and for the NSW proportion of national bankruptcies having risen from 25% to 38%.

GREG BLOOMFIELD’S SUGGESTION

Greg (of FairGO, phone 02 9988 3312) suggests that the Joint Regional Planning Panels being set up by the NSW Government to approve regional planning developments and issues shall consist of:

Two state government representatives appointed by the minister
Two local government representatives appointed by vote of the local council
Two community representatives appointed by a vote of the presidents or senior unpaid voluntary officers of each voluntary community organisation with more than 30 registered/paid up members within the local government area and registered as such within the local council area, each of which presidents or officers shall have one vote.

A person shall be disqualified from membership of the panel if that person has any financial interest or is employed by any organisation with any financial interest in real estate or real estate development within the local government area except by virtue of owning or renting their own prime residential home, prime office space or voluntary community organisational premises.

In the event of an equality of votes on the panel the status quo shall prevail, ensuring that any approval is supported by two thirds of the panel.

Sustainable city

It is obvious that many of these academics, architects and planners take the city's existence for granted. They see the city just as a sculpture. They take it's existence for granted and do not seem to understand that a city only exists because of it's people.
If a city is pleasant to live in, functionnal, beautiful, economically successful and offers affordable accomodation people want, then people stay. The city grows and lives on.
If a city is badly managed, unpleasant, offers low economic opportunities and unaffordable housing that does not meet the desires of it's population, then people will go and the city will die.
In such a way, offering accomodation such as high rises that people do not want to live in, is in itself the most unsustainable policy any planner could have for a city, regardless of the environmental impact. If Sydney goes with those policies, people will inevitably move to where their needs can be met. In the past people have left Sydney for the Central Coast, now they are leaving NSW for other states. In an economy more and more global, the alternatives to Sydney are not just in Australia, but also overseas.

Adrien Krebs

ABC Off the Rails

Sadly, the engineering practicalities relating to transport proposals never seem to be considered by commentators. Wendell Cox writes as follows:

ABC’s Background Briefing ran a story on Sunday (14 December) decrying the continued delay in expanding Sydney’s rail system. Regrettably, it was typical of a policy environment that appears to understand neither cities nor urban transport.

The story provided virtually no balance and certainly no perspective. To read it you would get the impression that everyone works in downtown Sydney. It isn’t even close to that. All of downtown Sydney, Haymarket and North Sydney accounts for less than 20 percent of employment in the Sydney area. This means that 80 percent of the commuters work elsewhere. There is virtually nothing that a rail system can do to get these people to work, because not enough of the employment outside the central business district is within walking distance of rail stations, and most trips would require a transfer downtown. That would not be changed by adding a metro in any of Sydney’s corridors. The government appears to have stumbled into wise policy as a result of the exorbitant cost of these systems.

Transport systems need to be chosen based upon their cost effectiveness in achieving public objectives. As regards the economic growth and affluence of the Sydney area or any other area, minimizing travel time does that best. Thus, projects should be chosen on such factors as the cost per reduced delay hour. Regrettably, in Sydney and many other urban areas in the developed world, such considerations take a back seat to romantic affection for rail systems and hefty political donations from those who build the systems and those who anticipated that building them will substantially increase their property values.

Paris

Why, people ask, does Sydney not emulate the density of Paris? Then everyone can use public transport and Sydney's transport problems will be solved.

Yes, it is a delight for tourists to travel around Central Paris.

But they are referring to the part of Paris seen by tourists and town planners. What they see is the old central Paris, built before the advent of motorised transport. Such old cities were dense because they had to be. Walking was the only means of getting around. But as soon as people were freed to travel by faster means, they started moving out of the inner cities. The central city of Paris now has severe congestion, the average vehicle speed is only 20 km per hour. It has more congested streets than Los Angeles. Yet Central Paris has high density living, no freeways and one of the world’s most intensive rail transit systems.

The part of Paris tourists and town planners do not see are the post WW2 housing estates built around Paris which are as dense as any city anywhere but are notorious for poor public transport and high car usage.

The Ville de Paris reached its peak population 80 years ago, and has lost more than 700,000 residents since 1954. At the same time, the suburbs of Paris have accommodated all of the growth in the area.

This trend is not just limited to Paris. Virtually all urban growth in major European cities has been in the suburbs over the past 40 years.

The proportion of public transport journeys in these cities is not significantly different from that of Sydney. Public transport percentage of journeys in Sydney is 10%, in Paris, Vienna and other similar European cities it is 20%, not all that different If we look at worldwide trends in public transport use – they are nearly all down. Hamburg was down 26% in a decade, Copenhagen down 12%. Sydney, in spite of urban consolidation policies has been down 7%. The world average down 13%. Realistically, as soon as people become sufficiently affluent to live in a suburb, they tend to do so.

Thus, contrary to what the high-density advocates would have us believe, the higher densities of European cities do not seem to be doing much for transport. Latest figures for Sydney are even more startling. They show that during the period of imposed urban consolidation, the Sydney public transport share of journeys has decreased even more, down by a whopping 28%. There are a number of reasons for this but a major factor is that jobs are now becoming distributed all over the city. Public transport is only good for going to a central location. 70% of journeys to work in the CBD are by public transport, for the rest of Sydney only 10%. But only 13% of employment is in the CBD.

Average journey time to work increases in dense cities, not the other way around. Sydney travel times now are worse than those in Los Angeles. This is not surprising –In addition to deteriorating public transport Sydney has a shocking road system. Our freeway capacity compared to other cities. Way below that of Hong Kong, Singapore, Barcelona, Athens, Paris, Toronto, Milan and Tokyo

It is geometrically impossible for public transport to go from everywhere to everywhere in most cases. The only city in the world which has a significant majority of jouneys by public transport (80%) is Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a population density of 50,000 per sq km compared to Sydney's 2000. Do we really have to live like that? If so, why?

How to Make the First Home Buyer Grant Work

It is clear that the Rudd government has given housing affordability a prominent place in its agenda. The government’s efforts to reduce infrastructure fees on the fringe of Canberra are surely a step in the right direction, since such fees are, along with urban consolidation land rationing, responsible for destroying housing affordability.

In further pursuit of housing affordability, the Rudd government has announced plans to increase the first home owner grant from $7,000 to $21,000 for new houses. The reviews are not nearly so positive, however. Some experts, including ANZ Bank Chief Economist Saul Eslake see a risk that the program will simply increase house prices. This would, of course, simply neutralize the effectiveness of the first home owner grant.

While there is no disputing the good intentions of the government, Eslake and other critics are probably right. Any infusion of money into the housing market is likely to increase prices, simply because the supply of new housing is so strictly and artificially rationed by severely restricting the release of new housing land. If there is one thing that economics makes clear, it is that rationing leads to higher prices. And, there have been few better examples of that principle of economics in action than the stingy land use policies that are in operation in virtually all of the nation’s major urban areas.

State governments, and in some cases local authorities, have fitted a tight noose around existing urbanization, despite the fact that more than 99 percent of the nation remains rural --- not developed. As a result, new homes are not being built at a sufficient rate and those that are being built are far too costly. For example, in recent years, house construction on the fringe of Sydney has been at 1950’s levels. The problem is that Sydney and the nation have far more households to serve than half a century ago but there has not been enough land made available on which houses can be built. Without the normal market supply of inexpensive new housing on the urban fringe, there is no way for house prices to go on the fringe but up, as the larger first home buyer grant leads to higher prices.

The problem of first home buyer affordability needs to be addressed at its root. The Great Australian Dream was made possible by building housing on cheap urban fringe land. The cost of the land on which the houses were built was little more than its agricultural value plus the cost of providing streets and utility connections (most of that included in the developer’s price). If today’s land use planning policies had been in effect, much of suburban Australia would not have been built, there might not have been a Great Australian Dream and the nation would be less affluent. Affordable new housing on the fringe is beyond reach until law, regulation and policy allow it to be built, Canberra’s money or not.

Probably no nation in the world has been more driven by egalitarianism and the hope for a better life for all than Australia. In that pursuit, generations of Australians have worked hard to better the future for those that follow.

But, more recently, radical land use policies have begun to extinguish this most attractive of Australian values. Restrictive land supply policies such as urban consolidation have made housing so expensive for up-and-coming households that many will never participate in the Great Australian Dream, unless fortunate enough to inherit their homes (how un-Australian can you get?). What is even more troubling is that these radical policies were adopted, without the slightest consideration of their likely longer term social or economic consequences. Indeed, some academic and planning elites scorn the likes of western Sydney from their upper-middle-class perches, unmoved by the reality that places like western Sydney had much to do with making Australia an inclusive nation of hope.

Few reforms could more restore the promise of Australia to younger households and immigrants than to abandon the radicalism that has virtually banned low cost housing on the urban fringe. In such an environment, larger first home buyer grants would also make housing more affordable.

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Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, St. Louis (USA), co-author of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris.