Smart Growth and Transit Oriented Development are both phrases being used a great deal in government documents concerned with future planning. What is meant by these words may be difficult to understand and often depends on who uses them and the underlying pupose for their use. Planning based on these terms will affect all Queenslanders and as such each of us is entitled to comment on possible outcomes. High density housing and high-rise buildings are timely where expansion is limited by geographical features such as mountains sea and national parks but perhaps not so readily accepted where undisciplined sprawl can continue to spread across plainlands.
However the same questions of rising costs associated with oil and the provision of infrastructure, together with climate change may limit low density growth of developments in Queensland - especially in South East Queensland.
What is the Australian dream in the twentyfirst century? Where can families grow and be happy in in South East Queensland? How much open green spaces to we need? As individuals? As a community? As a society? Do we need our own or can we share? Complex questions and many answers.
Peter Newman is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Perth and a member of Infrastructure Australia's Advisory Council. His article in the Sydney Morning Herald praises Perth's new Southern Railway saying it already is something of a model for other cities. Now, 50,000 people a day are carried along a corridor that before could only manage 14,000 on buses.The Southern Railway is a model in other respects, too with some stations having transit oriented developments, or TODs. These are high density, mixed-use areas with homes, shops and offices, designed to integrate closely into the station and which can provide a local area with many city services.