Success of city activity centres depends on behaviour change

Ambitions to reshape Shepparton’s activity centres with awareness of social, economic and environmental matters should be applauded, but success hinges on our willingness to change our behaviours.

Ideas that prevailed and worked in the 20^th Century are not appropriate as conditions that once ensured their success no longer exist.

Growth is a slippery term and takes its meaning from the prism through which it is viewed and it can either be based on capitalist/consumerist ideology or the enhancement of qualities and activities that underpin a resilient community equal to the unfolding rigours of the coming decades.

The City of Greater Shepparton has used professional help to draw up plan for its “Commercial Activity Centres Strategy” and now it wants people who live here to comment about what is proposed.

Courage and bravery are not words commonly associated with planning ideas or proposals, but both must be evident just to pick up this blizzard of words and then to contemplate reading it.

I fear that as with many similar reports, it will quickly find its way to the bottom drawer and not only physically disappear, but quickly drop off councillors’ consciousness.

What is happening here is a microcosm of matters bigger than us and to re-shape Shepparton without acknowledging what the wider-world is wrestling with signifies sclerotic thinking; thinking unable to accept such things as climate change.

The former Australian of the Year, chair of the Federal Government disbanded Climate Commission, scientist, and author, Tim Flannery said recently when launching his new book, “Atmosphere of Hope” that the world will surpass the two degree guardrail nations have agreed to.

The two degree guardrail above pre-industrial temperatures was considered humanity’s only hope of protecting the “Goldilocks-like” conditions in which we have prospered, but that will soon be a memory as at less than just one degree increase, earth’s disturbed climate has brought an end to understandable seasonal conditions.

And so as we plan and shape the Shepparton of tomorrow it would be irresponsible to pretend our climate wasn’t changing, that we are going to replicate the energy-rich wonders of the 20^th Century or that the ancient soils of the Goulburn Valley are going to continue their bountiful production.

Figures in the wordy and daunting Essential Economics report can be unsettling, but become even more fearful if interpreted and applied without acknowledgement of those realities Flannery and other like him say will be integral to our lives within a decade or so.

So rather than allowing geographical sprawl of the city accentuating ever-expanding infrastructure, we should be planning for and building a city with increased density that makes walking and cycling not only possible but preferable, the emphasis should be on public transit, and an activity centre, wherever it is, should be as self-reliant as possible.

Growth idealogues celebrate as Australia's population tops 23 million

Growth ideologues should be smiling now that Australia’s population has topped 23 million.

Prof Tim Flannery posits
 Australia's ideal population
 carrying capacity is
between eight and 12
million.

More people, in corporate talk, equates with more profits.

Behind that shiny corporate facade, is a paradigm that encourages endless expansion; a tumour-like growth of which any talk about control is taboo.

Beyond that, any discussion about limiting population growth is equally distasteful for almost immediately reason and logic is abandoned and emotion hogs the spotlight.

The 2007 Australian of the Year, Professor Tim Flannery, presently a member of the Australian Climate Commission, has calculated that Australia’s long-term carrying capacity was between eight and 12 million.

He points out that Australia’s population had reached those marks in 1950 and 1968 respectively.

Considering Prof Flannery’s observation we have either, in the first instance, more than doubled Australia’s population carrying capacity or nearly doubled the second number.

The idea of a “big” Australia is out of step with what Australian’s actually need; rather than bigger, we need better.

Shepparton is bound for “bigger” with statistics on the City of Greater Shepparton website suggesting that by 2031 a further 16 500 people will live here, producing a population nearing 80 000.

Arguments that bigger is always better and more beautiful are riddled with fallacies; unintended consequences that are assembling on the horizon now, poised to disable humanity.

Questions about the cause of climate change, an undeniable scientific and practical reality, attract varied answers, most of which are in themselves correct, but rarely do they focus on the reality that there is simply too many of us.

Any suggestion that we somehow humanely control our numbers produces an almost immediate and sharp passionate response loaded with accusations of Nazi-like eugenics and a big brother-like forced abandonment of our responsibility to pro-create.

That “responsibility” is many faceted, yes, we do have a responsibility to pro-create, but at replacement level or less, but we also have an intergenerational obligation, a responsibility to those that follow to live with restraint, care for the planet and so leave the earth healthier than it was then when we arrived.

Population growth is exponential and the likelihood of us leaving the earth in better shape than we found it is becoming more remote as each day passes.

Education is the first, the last and beyond birth control, restraint and good sense, the only ally upon which we can call to slow the world’s burgeoning population growth.

Modern life is loaded with endless distractions and the corporate world, aided by myriad problematic institutions, would have us believe all is well.

It is unfair however, to blame upon the world’s corporations and our institutions as the real responsibility rests with us for we have failed to educate ourselves and so do not understand the limits to growth.