In defending the annihilation of his own government's long-term planning policy by massively expanding the urban growth boundary to promote urban sprawl as the preferred future urban form for Melbourne, Victorian planning minister Justin Madden has branded anyone opposing those plans as peddlers of "cultural snobbery", a term he obviously likes becuase he uses it no less than three times in this spirited article he wrote for the Age yesterday.
And spirited it should be: an able minister, which by all accounts Madden is, ought to be able to defend his policy positions robustly. And his underlying question - about whether there is an element of elitist "urban cringe" supporting the arguments of those that promote urban consolidation over sprawl - is a valid question to ask. I just happen to be one of the many that disagree with his conclusions.
Madden's position, justified through his emotive recollections of his own boyhood experiences of growing up on the urban fringe, toughing it out with other battler families and determined as a politician not to deny that wonderful formative opportunity to other struggling young families determined to secure their own Australian dream on the urban fringe, seems to be that you should just have an endlessly growing realm of outer suburbia - sprawl ad finitum. He does not seem to consider that the sprawl should end at any point. Since there will always be young families wanting to build new houses on the urban fringe, there should apparently be an ever expanding urban fringe to accommodate those wishes. This is hardly a very sustainable position - does it mean Melbourne should just spread onwards and outwards forever?
I take particular exception to these comments:
Our city is growing and we need to provide housing options so that Victorians have the opportunity to own their own homes.
Why? Firstly, the growth projections are just that, projections, and they should be just one tool employed to shape policy; there ought also to be a component of shaping the sort of future we want, not just reacting to modelling. Secondly, the Australian obsession with home ownership needs to be questioned. In other countries long-term rental accommodation is not only a viable form of secure accommodation, but it is the norm in terms of tenure type. Here, rental accommodation is structured in such a way that it can only ever be a short to medium term option. If we really wanted to innovate, we'd look at a major restructuring to how our rental markets work to make long-term renting a viable option for more people.
Balance is about fast-tracking key building projects to create more jobs to help Victoria through the global financial crisis.
I do not think that planning policy, which more than any other realm of government policy creates a lasting, irreversible legacy in terms of a built environment, is an appropriate conduit through which to progress short-term (and arguably short-sighted) economic development and employment strategies, because we have to live with the results of it for a long time after the short-term benefits have dissipated.
