1. 5 February 2010

    Reblogged from
    nickdouglas

    boldasloves: oh, interesting. So many people want these giant “McMansions”, that must take up so much energy, materials and money. I don’t get it. Right? And worse, when these new ‘suburbs’ are built (and they’re not really suburbs but tiny satellite cities with no centre), government is only to happy to pocket the stamp duty and property taxes, yet they never deliver the services that those taxes are meant to provide - especially public transport. So we have now, Melbourne, a city that is a touch over 100km from one side to the other, with a population of about 4 million. That’s absurd. People who live out of the reach of the public transport network find themselves needing up to three cars per household, while people who live in the inner city can very well get along without a car at all. It’s a massive resource impost, and one that the labour government should be trying to stop. Instead, the government, with its aping of the 1950’s version of the Australian dream that everyone should have a 1/4 acre block of land to grow up on (I’m looking at you, Simon Madden) is the worst enabler of all. I’m not saying we need to live cheek-by-jowl as Londoners do (with a population density of about 4500/km2) but our spread-out way of living (1500/km2) needs to come to swift end. EDIT: km2 was originally m2

    boldasloves:

    oh, interesting. So many people want these giant “McMansions”, that must take up so much energy, materials and money. I don’t get it.

    Right?

    And worse, when these new ‘suburbs’ are built (and they’re not really suburbs but tiny satellite cities with no centre), government is only to happy to pocket the stamp duty and property taxes, yet they never deliver the services that those taxes are meant to provide - especially public transport.

    So we have now, Melbourne, a city that is a touch over 100km from one side to the other, with a population of about 4 million. That’s absurd.

    People who live out of the reach of the public transport network find themselves needing up to three cars per household, while people who live in the inner city can very well get along without a car at all.

    It’s a massive resource impost, and one that the labour government should be trying to stop. Instead, the government, with its aping of the 1950’s version of the Australian dream that everyone should have a 1/4 acre block of land to grow up on (I’m looking at you, Simon Madden) is the worst enabler of all.

    I’m not saying we need to live cheek-by-jowl as Londoners do (with a population density of about 4500/km2) but our spread-out way of living (1500/km2) needs to come to swift end.

    EDIT: km2 was originally m2