The Quality of Sprawl
Bob Day, president of the Australian Housing Industry Association, challenges the idea that sprawl is bad, and suggests that policies that promote urban density are the foundation of the country's housing affordability crisis.
"Today I want to do three things: 1. Systematically challenge and refute the main arguments used to stop urban growth, 2. Highlight the problems associated with urban congestion, and 3. Show that Australia’s current planning ideology has created a massive housing affordability crisis which will have serious economic and social consequences into the future.
Regrettably, urban sprawl has become a pejorative term without any serious examination of its qualities or benefits and without any critical analysis of its troubled alternative – urban congestion. The notion that “Sprawl is Bad†has so infected the planning industry that any thought to the contrary is quashed in an instant..."
Day concludes:
"The erosion of self reliance and the damage to family life that comes when people are precluded from homeownership, will of course not be borne by existing home owners living comfortably within the leafy bounds of current urban growth boundaries, but by those excluded from home ownership because they have been priced out of the housing market.
In the end there are a thousand good reasons to allow urban sprawl and not one good reason to persevere with this demonstrably failed policy of urban congestion."
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Absurd Arguements...
A rediculous piece of housing industry propaganda here. Bob Day actually tries to claim that suburbs are "bio-diversity Live Zones". He compares pictures of intense monocultured crops and some rather poor-looking medium-density housing with a lushious and idealized picture of a suburban development, claiming that the former are inextricably linked and "bio-diversity dead zones" whereas the latter stands apart. Is he seriously claiming that manicured, poisoned lawns with a few trees scattered here and there is "diversity"? This betrays a deep misunderstanding of bio-diversity. Also, is he claiming that suburbanites don't rely on agro-business or their food?
The simple fact of the matter is there is no future in further sprawl. Despite his claims, sprawl IS bad for he environment, expensive in terms of services, and ultimatel unsustainable. Anyone who reads this article, look at the source (President of the Housing Industry Association) and you'll see that construction profitability is driving this ingenuous bit of non-philosophy. Still valuable, however, because of the ease of refuting its very weak arguements.