Letters printed - September

Daily Telegraph 14 September 2006

Clean air sacrificed in the crush

Your article on smog is a withering indictment of the Government’s urban densification policies ("City smog kills 1400," The Daily Telegraph, September 12).

Concentrating more people in a given area means more cars in that area and more congestion. This will cause more air pollution than would be the case with low density.

The smaller area available for dilution and dispersion will overwhelm any increase in public transport usage. High density is not good for our health.

Tony Recsei, Warrawee

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St George and Sutherland Shire Leader 19 September 2006

Density dispute

V Giammarco asserts that lots of neighbours in higher urban densities automatically produce more shops near stations, more frequent train services, more housing choice and so on (Your Say, September 5). Clearly this isn’t so. If it were, Calcutta would be a great place to live.

In the forty three years that I’ve lived in the Shire, there has been considerable population growth. But during that time, Jannali has lost all of its four butcher shops and only one bank remains where there were five. And the train services are slower, unreliable and overcrowded during peak hours.

V Giammarco’s theory is a dud.

Gordon Hocking, Oyster Bay

V. Glammarco imagines the delights of a high-density city. The only problem is – where in the world, outside of Cloud-cuckoo-land, can one find a high-density city that does not exhibit the exact opposite of these dreams? The facts are that real-world high-density cities suffer overloaded infrastructure resulting in higher council charges, acute traffic congestion and longer average journeys to work. In spite of more than a decade of urban densification in Sydney, public transport percentage share is significantly down. The number of services is decreasing and the trains are slower than they were in the 1940s.

High-density cities have overcrowded facilities, more pollution, less housing choice, higher housing cost, exacerbated mental illness, wholesale destruction of green open space and no gardens for children to play in.

What is more, the effect of high-density on the area of Sydney’s urban footprint would be negligible. Don't believe the spin doctors: get the facts at www.sos.org.au.

Tony Recsei, Warrawee