THE way we organise our cities and regions creates problems everywhere.
We’re facing difficult and polluting drives to work, a lack of affordable housing, and urban designs that lead to car dependency and are bad for our health.
For example, poor levels of walkability are associated with higher rates of obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Parks and greenery are associated with better mental and cognitive health.
Australian cities sprawl
Many suburbs are hard to get to by public transport or cycling and walking.
Our sprawling cities use a lot of land per person. Their resource use and carbon footprints are massive.
They also produce huge amounts of waste.
To resolve such issues, government planners should think beyond our capital cities. Australia needs to develop strategies that connect these capitals with surrounding regional cities to create “megacity regions”
What are megacity regions?
A megacity region is a network of urban areas linked to a capital city by home-to-work commuting.
Megacity regions connect these urban centres more efficiently to make them more sustainable and productive.
How ready is Australia for megacity regions?
The 2019 CSIRO Australian National Outlook explored the question “What will Australia be like economically, socially and environmentally in 2060?” .
Its modelling showed that “stronger regions” created major benefits across transport, health, education, jobs and housing.
What makes change possible?
Cities and their central business districts are important for their agglomeration effects – the accumulated benefits of concentrated social and economic activity. But this also often leads to social, economic and environmental problems. Integrating regional cities into the economic life of their capital cities can reduce some of these problems. It can also produce many benefits, including new and more efficient industries, enhanced communication networks and stronger labour markets. Ubiquitous fast internet
Major capital cities continue to act as engines of bandwidth-hungry, information economy industries in Australia. Fast internet can open up job opportunities.
Hybrid work
Today, only 18% of Australian knowledge workers work “only in the office”. Not having to go into work every day means knowledge workers can live further from their workplace.
This changes the employment landscape in regional centres. Many information economy jobs can be done in non-metropolitan locations where housing costs less.
Why is this important now?
Both the Federal and Victorian Governments are preparing strategic plans to guide long-term urban development.
Both have issued discussion documents for public feedback. These documents are long on planning principles but short on mission-scale programs capable of transformative change. This sort of change is now the focus of long-term planning internationally. Land-use planning of megacity regions needs to feature strongly in Australian urbanisation plans too.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve urban development at a scale and in a form that can transform Australia’s settlement system.
Extracts of this Swinburne University of Technology essay were sourced from: theconversation.com.au
