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A city doesn't need a specific land type to be viable when you consider that practically everything a city needs is brought in from outside the urban environment anyway.
Historically the Australian state capitals were set up where water was available. But if you look at it today, well most water in Adelaide doesn't come from the Torrens and even Hobart gets 80% of its' water from sources other than Mt Wellington and the Hobart Rivulet which flows from it. Much the same everywhere.
Food - most of it isn't grow in cities. It is grown elsewhere and brought in by road and rail.
Water - the existing cities have already grown too large for their local water sources, now bringing it in from more distant areas and in more recent times desalination which works anywhere you've got access to sea water.
Power - Apart from Darwin (virtually the entire supply), Adelaide (about half the supply) and to a lesser extent Perth, not much electricity is produced within city environments these days apart from rooftop solar (which works anywhere the sun shines). For Sydney and Melbourne, most of it already comes from 150 - 200km or more away.
Gas - piped in from gas fields. It's pure coincidence that Melbourne and Darwin aren't too far from gas fields, they weren't know about when the cities were established and in any event, it's easy to pipe gas over long distances. Sydney's gas comes from Vic and SA, for example, all gas in Tas comes from Vic and until a few years ago all gas in Darwin came from the other end of the NT.
Transport fuel - easily shipped or piped in. Practically all the petrol, diesel etc we use is from crude oil produced nowhere near the point of use. In Sydney, the whole lot is shipped in already refined and it's the same in NT, SA and Tas. There are refineries in and near Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane but they're largely processing oil from distant sources either Australian or foreign.
Manufactured goods - a factory can be set up anywhere and in any event, most of what we buy these days is imported. There's no fundamental reason why we had to make cars in Adelaide for example, the factories could have been built somewhere else. And if you do build a big factory in a small town, well then it becomes a bigger town pretty quickly - plenty of places have seen that happen over the years.
Looking at a map, I don't see that Melbourne is the only place in Victoria, or Sydney is the only place in NSW, where a city of 2 million people could exist. And then there's existing cities other than Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, many of which would arguably benefit from greater scale since they're nowhere near the point of diminishing returns yet.
So far as housing is concerned, a great deal of our problems are because we're trying to cram everyone into just two cities.
As an example of a possible approach, if the company tax rate were lowered by even just 1% for companies with an Australian head office located outside the big cities then that alone would do wonders for regional development and fixing the infrastructure problems in the major cities.
Historically the Australian state capitals were set up where water was available. But if you look at it today, well most water in Adelaide doesn't come from the Torrens and even Hobart gets 80% of its' water from sources other than Mt Wellington and the Hobart Rivulet which flows from it. Much the same everywhere.
Food - most of it isn't grow in cities. It is grown elsewhere and brought in by road and rail.
Water - the existing cities have already grown too large for their local water sources, now bringing it in from more distant areas and in more recent times desalination which works anywhere you've got access to sea water.
Power - Apart from Darwin (virtually the entire supply), Adelaide (about half the supply) and to a lesser extent Perth, not much electricity is produced within city environments these days apart from rooftop solar (which works anywhere the sun shines). For Sydney and Melbourne, most of it already comes from 150 - 200km or more away.
Gas - piped in from gas fields. It's pure coincidence that Melbourne and Darwin aren't too far from gas fields, they weren't know about when the cities were established and in any event, it's easy to pipe gas over long distances. Sydney's gas comes from Vic and SA, for example, all gas in Tas comes from Vic and until a few years ago all gas in Darwin came from the other end of the NT.
Transport fuel - easily shipped or piped in. Practically all the petrol, diesel etc we use is from crude oil produced nowhere near the point of use. In Sydney, the whole lot is shipped in already refined and it's the same in NT, SA and Tas. There are refineries in and near Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane but they're largely processing oil from distant sources either Australian or foreign.
Manufactured goods - a factory can be set up anywhere and in any event, most of what we buy these days is imported. There's no fundamental reason why we had to make cars in Adelaide for example, the factories could have been built somewhere else. And if you do build a big factory in a small town, well then it becomes a bigger town pretty quickly - plenty of places have seen that happen over the years.
Looking at a map, I don't see that Melbourne is the only place in Victoria, or Sydney is the only place in NSW, where a city of 2 million people could exist. And then there's existing cities other than Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, many of which would arguably benefit from greater scale since they're nowhere near the point of diminishing returns yet.
So far as housing is concerned, a great deal of our problems are because we're trying to cram everyone into just two cities.
As an example of a possible approach, if the company tax rate were lowered by even just 1% for companies with an Australian head office located outside the big cities then that alone would do wonders for regional development and fixing the infrastructure problems in the major cities.
