# Some Points To Consider When Determining Future Population Policy In Australia

Mark Allen - Population, Permaculture and Planning

Australia is a land of urban-conurbations not boundless plains

Forty percent of Australians live either in Melbourne or Sydney compared to only twenty percent of people who live in England's two main cities of London and Birmingham. Therefore our population growth (which translates to a new Sydney less than every 15 years) is far less evenly distributed than in many European countries who are served with a large network of established towns.

In Melbourne and Sydney especially, infrastructure and services are not coming anywhere close to keeping up with population growth, which is why the Victorian Liberal opposition leader, Matthew Guy has asked that there be a conversation about population growth and why the ex-premier of NSW, Bob Carr has stated that Sydney is growing too fast. There isn't the money available in the State coffers to pay for the necessary infrastructure to create long term sustainable communities at this rate of growth.

Urban Consolidation in its current format is not a solution for housing a fast growing population

On top of a growing infrastructure debt, Melbourne will require an additional 355,000 new homes in the next decade alone, just to keep up with demand. Many people advocate urban consolidation to cater to this need but so far in Melbourne at least, this approach has turned out to be a major exercise in greenwash, whereby very few high-density residential developments are even remotely affordable to people on lower incomes. Even fewer units are large enough to house families. A recent study by Bob Birrell and David McCloskey from The Australian Population Research Institute has highlighted that ninety percent of new apartment approvals in Melbourne are no greater than sixty square metres in size, mainly because they are aimed at investors. Without a strong component of affordable housing in place, urban consolidation adds to suburban sprawl because it forces more people on lower incomes to the urban fringe. Even with affordable housing provisions it would be unrealistic that most of Melbourne's 100,000 a year increase in population would be happy living in high-rise tenements in the inner suburbs which are already feeling the strain of increased demand for services.

We also need to be focussing on developing brownfield sites, increasing densities in the middle suburbs and establishing new urban villages on the railway line outside of the Metropolitan area in order to properly accommodate a doubling of Melbourne's population, but this takes time and it would require a slower rate of population growth. This is because good planning needs to be well considered and should take into account much more than the housing needs of its residents. To take one example, the proposed Fisherman's Bend development in Melbourne has been on the drawing board for a long period, yet upon completion, it will absorb less than one year's worth of Melbourne's current rate of population growth.

An alternative strategy (which is promoted by forward thinking planners such as Professor Michael Buxton) is to increase the density of middle suburbs that already contain a substantial amount of infrastructure and much of the post-war detached housing stock contained within them does not come anywhere close to the energy efficiency standards that would be required if they were built today. A substantial proportion of this stock could be replaced with dual or triple occupancy developments complete with access to private open space. This would be in contrast to the higher density alternatives that are being championed in the inner suburbs, where space is much more of a premium.

If we want to avoid the current situation whereby rapid population growth is leading to suburban sprawl and poor quality high density apartment living that is aimed at a narrow demographic, then we should slow population growth to enable a slower more resilient planning model. This would include:

1. Allowing existing post-war housing stock over time to be replaced with a greater proportion of medium density development in the middle suburbs.

2. Well considered, brownfield site developments that include precincts for economic activity.

3. New urban villages/regional towns which can become largely self contained but are also within