Last night on Lateline the Prime Minister was busted spinning a contradictory line.
We’re grappling perhaps for the first time – for any Australian generation – we’re grappling with the reality that a lot of these things are no longer limitlessly available at a modest cost. That time is changing.
Then later in the piece.
I think we do have to be willing to see an even greater urban sprawl. Of course we do.
After hearing this last night I was taken right back to Elizabeth Farrelly’s August 30th piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in which she quotes the PM’s favourite touch stone.
For Robert Menzies, however, as quoted by Cox-Pavletich, “one of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours”. Forget altruism. Menzies was a master tantric, appealing directly to that old lower chakra swadhisthana which, translated, means self or own abode.
The truth of course lies in Farrelly’s closing para.
What popular culture needs is not mindless back-patting but constant clear-eyed appraisal. And the clear-eyed fact is that sprawl – in eating arable land, destroying forest, polluting air (with extra car-miles), bankrupting public transport and wasting money on attenuated services – busts Cox’s “absent material threat” principle wide open. The sprawl threat is utterly material. You’re breathing it.
As is clearly obvious, the PM is a believer in the dumb mantra of sprawl and only mouths sustainability paltitudes for the six-o-clock sound bite. On this and many other issues related to environment and built space, he is yesterday’s man.
And suburban sprawl has contributed to obesity and wasted commuting time. Nor is it the product of a free market. I believe it owes a lot to lack of rational pricing of roads, zoning laws, height and density restrictions on apartment buildings, etc. Even addressing some of these issues would allow us to make more efficient use of our land.
Howard is indeed “yesterday’s man”.
The trouble is he is pandering to today’s voters who continue to dream yesterday’s dreams.
As a result, we are all living in yesterday.
The joke’s on us.
Jason,
“suburban sprawl … owes a lot to … zoning laws, etc.”
didn’t the think tank you are associated with release a report last week arguing that zoning lones and like prevented suburban sprawl, and that was a bad thing because it made housing expensive?
that should be zoning laws
Spiros, it was the Institute for Public Affairs which released the report you refer to. Jason is associated with the Centre for Independent Studies.
Paul,
mea culpa then. But don’t these two organisations have very similar views?
There are many points of similarity. However the IPA also pushes a very hard anti-environmentalist line, entailing hostility not only towards the environmental movement, but towards scientists, governments, politicians (including Liberal governments and politicians), government agencies, corporations, peak farmers groups, peak business groups, etc., which cooperate with the environmental movement or endorse positions advocated by the environmental movement. Thus the IPA has published editorials in its journal which attempt to explain why the National Farmers Federation and the CSIRO would join with the greenies in “telling porkies” about environmental problems in the Murray-Darling Basin.
My perception of the CIS and some of the people in it is that they are much more open to reason on the existence of environmental problems and the need to address them, whilst having a preference for policy responses drawn from the tradition of economic liberalism.
I’m slowly coming around to the pricing model Jason is talking about, however I’m not about to reject proper zoning and Govt/community direction on density and suburbanism because aesthetics do matter, pricing does not solve every issue related to our built space.
Look at the issue of the CUB site in Sydney, the proposed buildings would restrict some of the existing structures and residents to around two hours of sunlight in winter. How does pricing address this Jason?
Phil,
I think they would talk about Coase’s theorem. You work out how much hours of sunlight the neighbouring residents are entitled to, and then make the developers buy any extra off the people they are taking it away from.
Or something. I’m no expert but I think that would be the free market solution.
Because of course with a few more dollars in their pockets, they won’t need sunlight any more
Seriously though, is this meant to compensate the residents, make the plans as they are proposed prohibitively expensive, or some voodoo mixture of the two.
Good on ya Katz. We do indeed get the government that we deserve. Those who voted for him in the first place, and the rest of us for not doing enough to ensure that the other side got enough votes. Anyway. Can’t do much now, except wait for the next election and hope that he has passed up the chance to go out at a time of his choosing and as a conservative hero. Let’s face it, Howard is so crooked that when he dies they will be able to screw him into the ground. Or, apropos the comment made about Mountbatten, Howard is so crooked that he could swallow a nail and shit out a corkscrew…
The trouble with this joke on us, though, is that it has gone on so long that there ain’t never gonna be a punchline…
Cheers…
FDB,
I think its about coming to an accommodation, whether that be for the drop in land value or whatever. They can buy something better and rent out this to some uni students who’ll be happy to live there for cheap rent even if they don’t get sunlight. Or whatever else they chose to do. I know I was happy to trade sunlight for cheap rent as a student, certainly was good having a dark house when you were hung over. Alternately the price the residents demand might be too high so they have to curtail their designs somehow.
By the way, I’m not convinced this is best way to deal with all such problems but I certainly think it could be considered as a way to deal with some neighbours complaints if there are well defined rights. Hours of sunlight could be a candidate.
I can’t claim any high ground here myself – although I’m in North Fitzroy, I’ve jagged a big block, single storey rental house with a huge yard full of fruit trees and vege beds I really love. While that lasts, my enviro-living is confined to not watering the lawn, composting everything I can, recycling, not driving my car except when I have to get my drums someplace, and living with three other people.
FWIW, I don’t think ‘life is getting busier’ at all, except in the sense that people don’t feel they’ve ‘lived’ without having spent hours on internet/TV per day.
Hello Kettle, my name is Pot. Awfully black, aren’t you?
I think Steve has answered all my questions for me. FTR I don’t think all zoning/density laws should be scrapped but I think greater accomodation/flexibility could be introduced in those areas. I for one would be happy to trade away sunlight. Why not let people self-select where possible as long as it isn’t imposed on those who don’t want it?
Spiros
I’m only associated with the CIS in the sense of being a member and having an honourary title there because I was an ex employee. They don’t pay me. And not everyone in the same think tank shares the same views on everything.
PS by ‘member’ I mean subscriber. I pay them, not the other way around. Anyway I know some right wing think tanks are hitching their skirts to suburban sprawl but I think that’s pretty silly. No one knows what land use might look like with congestion pricing, more flexible planning laws, removing distortions which favour property investment, etc. To favour suburban sprawl is just to favour a status quo that may have been created by past distortions in the pricing of infrastructure and regulation of land use.
Fair enough Jason, and thanks for the reply comment.
Only problem with the sunlight issue is that existing residents, for example the CUB site in Chippo will also lose substantial daylight and receive NO compensation. Existing residents will get lumped with all the problems of thousands of new residents in a small area with aging infrastructure.
Is it fair for the current generation to trade their environment (including sunlight) for cash? Sunlight is not a new problem, see Ancient_lights in Wikipedia for instance.
“happily doing away with their backyards and building over their entire block because they’d rather have a home theatre and a couple more bathrooms than mow their lawns.”
Who wouldn’t rather do that? Lawns are overrated and waste water. Home theatres are great.
By the way count me in for one in favour of Urban living rather than suburban sprawl. Being able to take the elevator downstairs and buy a muffin from the coffee shop for breakfast is the way I prefer to live. I hate driving anywhere just to find the nearest shop.
Good point, Yobbo.
I just hate the way sprawl tends to cater to large centralised malls and supermarkets that most people don’t live near enough to to walk to. (Wow, that’s some shitty grammar, eh?). If you’re lucky there’s an overpriced ‘convenience’ store nearby and that’s about it.
I’m with Yobbo, lawns and backyards are overrated, and what I wouldn’t give for a sweet home entertainment system so that I can watch the ABC and SBS in even better definition and sound.
I’ve traded the cost of a backyard for improved non-motoring defined amenities.
Hurray for the inner city latte drinking urbanites!
Remember when it used to be ‘the cappucino set?’ Then every suburban mall was full of declasse froth-munchers, so the trendies switch to latte.
Now the rabble have caught up again. I don’t know too many inner-city progressive types who drink it any more. My theory:
The cooler and lefter you are, the more like coffee you want your coffee to taste. Before too long, we’ll have to just chew the beans.
North Fitzroy is so last month.
In Fitzroy Improper we’ve been chewing Skyberry Peaberry for weeks, on the left side of our mouths.
You want an aborted foetus with that?
sorry, just giving tips to the lefty-strawman-making sheltered workshop.
A backyard is not a lawn.
Its about the corruption of backyards into lawns. I reckon.
No thanx, we’re vegan in Fitroy Improper.
I’m with Jason – the “problem” of urban sprawl is basically a problem of not getting the prices right.
Get the prices right and the need for regulation, not to mention the sickening moralising on both sides (who the hell are apartment dwellers to decree my kids can’t play backyard cricket? But OTOH why should they have to subsidise it?), would be much reduced.
One of the things the market absolutely fails to deal with well, is land. Simple to understand why. Land is very finite, very ‘unfungible’ (massive transaction costs and psychological ties trumping financial nous) but obviously something nobody can dispense with. (Not even denizens of the net.)
To do away with social regulation (ie democratic decision making) over the use of a community’s land would be to return to feudalism in quick order.
In Fitzroy (Proper Enough Thankyou) we play cricket in the backyard too, but we keep to ground-strokes (which are more elegant anyway) and come off a (very) short run.