I couldn’t help but laugh when I read the following report whinging about rapid unplanned population growth in Canberra’s Gungahlin region, to the city’s north. From The ABC:
Gungahlin is one of Australia’s fastest-growing regions, but a leading planning expert says a “disastrous” lack of suitable infrastructure has left the burgeoning town centre feeling the squeeze.
ANU professor Patrick Troy has studied urban planning for 50 years, and does not hold back with his thoughts on Canberra’s northernmost town centre.
“I try not to think of Gungahlin, because I think it’s a disaster,” he said.
“There’s a disconnect between the planning and the actual development.
“The original planning for Gungahlin was on the assumption that there’d be as many jobs in Gungahlin as were people wanting to work.”
According to the most recent census data, Gungahlin is the second-fastest-growing region in Australia, and medium-to-high-density living is becoming increasingly common…
But while housing in the region has boomed, Professor Troy said the need for Gungahlin residents to commute out of the centre for work had not been accounted for with proper infrastructure.
“People living in Gungahlin who still want a job have to travel out of there to find a place to get work, and that’s the tragedy,” he said…
The construction of light rail from Gungahlin to Civic was a poor attempt to compensate for transport issues, he said.
“It’s not a consolation prize, it’s a stupid decision and it’s a disaster,” Professor Troy said.
“Where does it go? It doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t connect logically with anything else.”
The term “cry me a river” immediately came to mind when I read this article. While the Gungahlin region has indeed recorded strong population growth over the past five years (i.e. 23,839 people or a 50% increase):
This pales in comparison with the hyper-growth experienced in Australia’s major capitals, many of whom started with far worse infrastructure positions than Gungahlin:
Nor does Canberra’s overall population boom compare against Melbourne’s and Sydney’s:
While Canberra’s population expanded by 20.4% in the decade to 2016, this was actually below the national capital city average (21.7%), well below Melbourne’s (25.6%) and only a little above Sydney’s (18.2%).
However, given that Melbourne and Sydney started from much higher population bases, much worse starting infrastructure deficits, and both experienced more than 10-times the actual population growth of Canberra, it’s hard to feel sorry for the Gungahlin residents who are merely getting a small taste of the population crush that has long sucked the livability out of both Sydney and Melbourne.
The one positive to come out of Canberrans experiencing some of the pains of rapid population growth is that they might actually start to question the federal government’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ program and begin to argue for Australia’s permanent migrant intake to be slashed to sensible and sustainable levels:
But until then, talk to the hand.
