Ideas@TheCentre
It’s all about the city
Australians are ticked off with cities. We're maddened by crowds, incensed by traffic jams, fed up with crammed buses that don't arrive on time, and thoroughly cheesed off about house prices that resemble the GDP of small Pacific nations. So it's no surprise that we love sea changes. We love tree changes. We love to moan about incompetent state governments and refugees causing congestion.
But what if in our rush to the countryside (in our imaginations at least), we are forgetting the reasons why we are all packed like sardines in the first place.
Cities, especially big ones like Melbourne and Sydney, provide us with endless opportunities that simply are not available in remote locations. Entrepreneurs come into contact with potential investors, piano teachers find students, and artists find inspiration.
The scale of cities means we're more likely to find our niche. There is a reason why it is easier to find Portuguese language classes, or button shops, or synagogues in our bigger cities rather than our smaller towns.
We like the idea of logging into work from the farm or the beach house, but in reality most of us choose to live near theatres, sporting grounds, and shopping centres.
Communication and transport technologies that could have, in theory, facilitated decentralisation, have instead resulted in ever greater concentrations of industry. Serious financiers know they must go to Wall Street, aspiring Bollywood starlets to Mumbai.
So what can we do to make our cities great?
City Journal, in its 20th anniversary edition titled 'The Past, Present and Future of the City,' has some ideas. First, get out of people’s way and let them build the cities they want. Democratisation has turned Seoul into a thriving, vibrant city of fashion, art, theatres and restaurants. Meanwhile, the old centre of nearby Beijing is towered over by soulless, empty office blocks erected by China's central planners.
Or perhaps build charter cities that could become beacons of free trade and centres of employment growth in countries that are presently struggling. These cities might in time come to resemble Hong Kong or Taiwan.
Australia's rising population means that whingeing about the quality of our cities has become a new national pastime – as Aussie as watching the cricket or eating meat pies. Instead, we should be focusing on ways to lift the breaks on innovative development so we can make our growing cities great cities.
Jessica Brown is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies
