The ABC has published a concerning report, based on research from the Australian Conservation Foundation, warning that lost green space through urban consolidation is making our cities hotter by causing ‘heat islands’:
Dr Richardson highlighted Western Sydney as one urban region at risk of becoming “unliveable”.
“If Western Sydney hits 50 degrees Celsius and then the urban heat island adds another 15 degrees — 65 degrees is not going to be liveable…
The report explains in built-up cities, a lack of vegetation creates “‘heat islands” or pockets of warmer temperature, caused by air becoming trapped between buildings and other infrastructure…
Melbourne was found to be one of the least green cities, with just 23 per cent total tree cover, and Sydney had 34 per cent.
MB has been warning on this issue for years (for example, see here, here, and here).
Basically, persisting with the mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy all but guarantees that the ‘heat island’ effect will get worse as green space is chewed up in favour of high density housing to accommodate the millions of extra people inhabiting our cities.
Take a look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ pre-COVID population forecasts for Australia’s major capital cities. Due to ongoing mass immigration, the population of our cities was projected to roughly double in the 48 years to 2066:
The population of Australia’s major capital cities was projected to double under the mass immigration policy.
These extra 10-plus million people could only be squeezed into these cities via densification, which necessarily means the loss of green space and hotter ‘heat islands’.
Thus, urban planners’ infill utopia of squeezing millions more people into the existing urban footprint would necessarily chew-up backyards, trees and open space, making our cities much hotter.
It stands to reason, then, that the best solution to the ‘heat island’ problem is to prevent the ongoing destruction of green space by abandoning the ‘Big Australia’ mass immigration policy.
