In "The Grass isn't greener in the outer 'burbs" Robert Nelson takes a historical analogy of court life concentrated on the palaces of Paris or other imperial capitals, and from it sets out a model of the Australian city – where, in his view, "power and privilege are concentrated within 10km of the city centre". This leads him straight into a thesis that sprawl is singularly the product of the poorer segments of the population being forced outwards, by the reluctance of the privileged to allow inner areas of the city to be consolidated to greater density – and that those in the outer suburbs are thereby forever doomed to various inequities, which now require ongoing remedial compensations and subsidies.
Even if we accept some kernel of observed truth in this probable, but not uncontested key idea, Nelson comprehensively buries it with an overburden of stereotype and misconceptions.
His description of the development of the Australian city appears ignorant of its actual history. Perhaps there are key differences between Melbourne (where Nelson is based), and Sydney which I know much better. But the story of suburban expansion in Sydney is dominated from the earliest times by cycles of the wealthy moving outwards to Arcadian enclaves, while the walking distance to the centre is dominated by the growth of more humble, and denser dwellings of the working class. As transport takes the pressure off walking, some of the original leafy fringe in turn succumbs to speculative subdivision, and the wave of the wealthy moves outwards. Thus the names of many of the mean, but picturesque streets of Balmain mark the grand driveways of the original estates, Newtown still hides the odd neo-Georgian square within its crust of much smaller terrace housing, and the grand federation subdivisions of Strathfield are reminders that the suburb was not always of humbler quarter acre blocks. Even the far-flung expansion to the west beyond Parramatta was pioneered in the 1970's at least in part by members of the upper middle class, looking for sites big enough for the tennis court and perhaps the stables. In this they repeated the earlier settlement of the upper North Shore, far beyond Nelson's imagined 10km limit. Not surprisingly, the detail of Nelson's evidence is also deficient. Australia's oldest private school for boys, the very exclusive Kings, is beyond Parramatta, hardly in the inner ring.
If there is now a marked pattern of concentration of money, power and privilege, or rather a diffusion towards the edges, it is the product of more complex factors – for instance, the development of the post-war settlement areas, very similar in outcome to the infamous 'little boxes on a hilltop' of Levittown NY. My purpose here is not to describe those more complex dynamics; they are far too broad to attempt in a blog post. I am merely upset that even in the supposedly high end of critical commentary, we succumb to the 30-second grab of glib over-simplification.
The venerable Pat Troy long ago pointed out alternative issues we must consider in the comparison of sprawl and urban consolidation. Amongst other factors to contemplate is the insidious way that developers of higher density infill externalize the cost of expensively augmenting infrastructure – where governments categorize it as maintenance (in comparison to the cheaper capital works in the new subdivisions). And we should not dismiss the possible resilience of the older quarter acre block suburbs, in the face of climate change and altered patterns of food availability.
I am particularly upset that under the banner of championing sustainability, Nelson shrilly demonizes the urban fringe, while misrepresenting the actual situation of the inner areas. I do, however, agree with him that overall, we have significant problems with urban sprawl, that they are a product of deficiencies in planning, and that those deficiencies are the product of willful ignorance and political expediency.
Read the original article here.
