Where will the people go?

Australia’s major cities are struggling under the burden of fast population growth. Massive congestion and unaffordable house prices are two of the symptoms. Some people would prefer that we shut the borders to slow the growth, but this isn’t practical for a variety of reasons.

Better town planning, particularly better public transport, would certainly help. However, a big part of the answer has to be, as the wonderful Possum has argued, to encourage more people to move to regional areas.

Possum deals with questions of why this is needed, and how to get people to move, but leaves aside the issue of where we want the people to go. There is no point starting growth in areas where natural limitations will mean we soon run into the same problems, or where any growth will be at the cost of destroying priceless natural areas.

I’ve been trying to think where one would fit an extra ten million people into Australia. I think the figure is pretty realistic. At current rates of growth it is about what we will put on between now and 2050. I don’t think we need to worry too much about population growth beyond that point. By that time Australia’s natural growth will have reversed and the growth will be entirely from immigration. What is more, 2050 looks to be about the point where global population will peak and start to decline.

While it is likely that, even in a world of declining population, there will still be plenty of people keen to move to a wealthy nation like Australia, the moral imperative to take large numbers of people will be lessened, and it is quite likely that we will simply take enough to counter the natural fall in our population from birthrates below replacement.

So where would these 10 million go?

I’d say ideally none to outer Sydney, but infill projects such as Green Square will take a fair few, so perhaps 100,000 there.

Melbourne is straining, but I think with better public transport we could take another 500,000 in the north and west – they still won’t sprawl as far as Cranbourne.
Perth 500,000
Brisbane 300,000
Adelaide 300,000

So the big five cities, that currently hold most of Australia’s population will be able to take less than 20% of the growth before they start seriously compromising quality of life.

Looking at the next tier of cities I’d guess something like this (figures very rough):

Darwin 150,000
Gold Coast 100,000
Townsville 100,000
Canberra 100,000
Newcastle 100,000
Geelong 100,000
Wollongong 50,000
Hobart 50,000

So we’re still barely past a quarter. I agree with Possum that building entire new cities is not a good way to go. Instead we need to bolster regional centres. As I noted on Possum’s blog, I think university towns are the way to go. I think Warrnambool, for example could go from being a city of about 30,000 as it is today, to being a thriving centre of 150,000 people based around a world class university centred on the current Deakin university site.

Still, if we are talking about cities of 100-200 thousand people we will need something like 70 of them to take on the people expected. It seems unlikely doesn’t it? So what’s the answer: Fit more in the big cities, have the new regional centres grow to half a million each rather than 150,000 or actually have 70 new substantial cities?