Shepparton idea contradicts what is proposed for Melbourne

Stuart Brand's "The Clock
of the Long Now".

The idea that urban Shepparton should be contained within a clearly proscribed boundary contradicts a present State Government proposal for Melbourne.

According to a recent story in the Melbourne Age, the State Government intends to “realign” Melbourne’s growth boundaries allowing housing developments in areas traditionally prolific producers of vegetables.

A similar scenario is evident in Shepparton.

Driven by the expansionist ambitions of developers, Shepparton’s urban area constantly expands, robbing the area of rich and valuable food producing farmlands.

It should be noted, however, that the idea of seeing urban Shepparton contained within a clearly delineated boundary is not official, rather it is mine.

Shepparton, like Melbourne, is becoming obese in that rather than trim up and make innovative use of space that already exists within the city, it adds weight around the edges and in doing so uses vital, and ultimately irreplaceable productive agricultural land.

Contemporary times have seen a raucous conversation about water, but the more important conversation, that must be had, is about the protection and within that the preservation of Goulburn Valley soils.

Our seeming careless and irresponsible use of productive rural land for the creation of a housing development measures only short-term profit and ignores what Shepparton will look like, or need, in a century.

Recently, Kialla’s Roy Roberts asked the question: “What will Shepparton look like in 100-years?” The implication of his question was that, whatever direction we choose for the city today, the essence of those decisions will still be intact in a century.

Food supply will unquestionably weigh heavily on our minds in decades to come and so rather than devour valuable food producing land close to the city for what in a food-deprived future will be a frivolous and wasteful idea, we should be creating an innovative and intense living structure within what exists.

Stuatrt Brand.

To some, considering 100-years in the future is impossible, but a century is insignificant compared to the 10 000 years Stuart Brand urges us to think about in his book, “The Clock of the Long Now”.

Like Roberts, Brand argues that what we do now will shape how we live in the centuries, and millennia, to come.

Man, the thinking animal, is burdened with intelligence, but lives, sadly, with a scarcity of wisdom.

Just last week a friend pondered aloud whether or not man had the intelligence to survive and in answering himself, he seriously doubted that.

When we pursue for short-term profit such things as sprawl that eats away at precious productive rural land, in defiance of facts that it is precisely the wrong thing to do, that becomes another of those equations that puts intelligence ahead of wisdom.

Proposals for Melbourne are nonsensical and what is happening in Shepparton is equally so.