The Quality of Sprawl

"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 â€" 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."

Thanks to Hugh Pavletich