Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Good at their job

I live on the NSW Central Coast. When we moved here it was still largely 
a rural area. While the particular part where I live is still predominantly 
rural, much of the rest of the area around Wyong and Gosford has been the 
scene of rampant development.

The Carr Labor Government is actively fostering the development of formerly 
small towns in Wyong shire in particular as "dormitory suburbs" for Sydney. 
The result is people commuting for up to four hours a day, for the only 
available jobs are in Sydney.

But it is a property developers' dream: new "housing estates" are opening 
up everywhere in the area. To maximise profit, the blocks are barely large 
enough to accommodate the pretentiously ornate project homes erected on 
them.

I was talking to a chap in Wyong a few days ago who was spitting chips 
about the Shire Council's eagerness for "development". Hundreds of 
thousands are to be added to the region's population, but where will they 
get their water from?

It will have to be piped in from elsewhere, he said, since local dams on 
the Central Coast can't supply it. A part-time nurseryman when not engaged 
in his full-time work as a health professional, he could see the future 
prospect of water restrictions as demand grew. It was not a pleasing 
prospect.

He didn't think much of the new style of building, with the house occupying 
virtually the whole of the block, either. Neither do I, so we got on fine.

"Where are the kids going to play?" he asked. There are no outdoor areas 
provided in these new developments and they can't play in their own 
backyard because they don't have one.

When they get a little older and turn from children into "young people" 
there are even fewer facilities provided.

My acquaintance informed me that he has some friends who are real estate 
agents. (I passed no comment: that kind of social misfortune can happen to 
anybody.)

His real estate agent friends, he said, were of the opinion that these 
cheek-by-jowl developments would become the slums of tomorrow.

As the areas of free space around these developments, which today give them 
a semblance of spaciousness and an airy, leafy, outdoor ambience, are 
themselves developed and built over, the character of the "estate" will 
change forever to the worst type of suburbia.

Cheek by jowl housing as far as the eye can see, broken only by the 
occasional crassly ugly shopping mall and accompanying parking area. 
Project homes are not built to last but to be replaced, so they will begin 
to show their age, both in their out-of-date styling and their decaying 
structure.

Neither my acquaintance nor his real estate agent friends seemed to see the 
contradiction in bemoaning this portrait of the rural suburban future while 
continuing to profit from developing and selling housing estates.

Real estate agents, more even than lawyers, epitomise the corrupting 
influence of capitalism. In most cases, they start out as ordinary workers, 
who get a lowly job in a real estate office.

But as they are encouraged to gain qualifications and seek a career in the 
"real estate industry", they are assiduously taught to "think capitalist".

First of all, they are taught how to profit from housing, a basic human 
need. They are taught to provide housing for the highest possible price, 
regardless of the actual cost, while denying housing to those who do not 
have money, despite their needs being just the same as people with money.

They are taught, carefully and methodically, to think of land exclusively 
in terms of private use. No beachfront, headland, escarpment or riverside 
can be allowed to evoke in them a sense of the public good, or of the 
benefit to the community of making this land public property to be enjoyed 
by all.

Where's the profit in that, they are taught. The profit is in making it 
private and selling it for the maximum amount possible. The more 
aesthetically pleasing a location is, the more unique the view from a site, 
the higher the price you can ask.

Ultimately, when they have reached a point where they can view a piece of 
land and see only its developmental potential for home sites or factory 
sites or even a shopping centre site, they are praised by the business 
community for being "good at their job".

This involves ignoring entirely the land's environmental significance, its 
necessity as green space in an otherwise crowded locality, its ecological 
importance, its historic significance or the fact that it is polluted with 
toxic waste.

But they are not praised by the people. With different training, these same 
real estate agents could have emerged as community-oriented workers in 
council or government land-management and public housing departments.

They could have just as readily developed skills in planning and building 
community centres that included not only shops but health care and aged 
facilities, schools and kindergartens, youth centres, sports facilities and 
cultural centres.

They could as easily allocate resources to planning and building cost-
effective housing that met community needs as they could to housing geared 
to maximum profits.

It's not their inner selves that's to blame; it's the system that has made 
them what they are.