If you don’t want urban sprawl, don’t have high immigration

By Leith van Onselen

Yesterday, the Victorian Government announced that it is rezoning 100,000 housing blocks and creating 17 new suburbs in Melbourne’s key growth zones in order to cater for Melbourne’s bulging population. From The ABC:

The blocks will go on the market between now and the end of next year in areas including Kalkallo, about 50 kilometres north of Melbourne’s CBD, where a community of up to 40,000 will be established at Cloverton over the next 30 years…

“I think that’s what’s so important about a steady land supply going forward, but also quality planned environments for people who are going to live here,” Planning Minister Richard Wynne said…

“We’re getting on and delivering the policies that will assure Victorians, certainly so far as the supply debate is concerned, that is the amount of housing stock that is available into the market,” Mr Pallas said…

The news was greeted with the following headline from The Age:

While the actual text of the article was less alarmist than the headline, it does raise an important point: if The Age is so concerned about urban sprawl, then why doesn’t it lobby against the Big Australia policies being run by our politicians, which funnel tens-of-thousands of new migrants into Melbourne every year? You know, the policy that has seen Melbourne’s population expand by 1 million people over the past 12 years:

And the policy that has Melbourne’s population projected to increase by around 1,850 people per week (97,000 people per year) for the next 35 years!

The fact of the matter is that as long as the federal government maintains its mass immigration program, then Melbourne will have to keep on increasing its urban footprint (as well as building-up) in order to accommodate all of the extra people. Land releases like the ones spruiked above will need to be replicated ad infinitum.

It’s not like residents aren’t already being crammed into shoe box apartments, which have become the dominant form of new housing in Melbourne to cater for this growth (see next chart).

Still, as long as Australia persists with a mass immigration “Big Australia” program then urban sprawl across Australia’s cities will continue. If you don’t like sprawl, then lobby to slash immigration. It’s that simple.

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