Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Urban Sprawl

The district where I live, the NSW Central Coast, has recently been in 
the news. Last week the ABC's 7.30 Report delved into a new report 
identifying Wyong Shire as the region in the State if not the country with 
the highest rate of child abuse, the highest divorce rate, the highest rate 
of unemployment, the highest percentage of single mothers and one of the 
highest rates of domestic violence.

These statistics are not unrelated. The NSW Government has for years now 
been pursuing a policy of promoting the development of the Central Coast as 
a dormitory district for Sydney.

The original concept had it as a dormitory district for both Sydney and 
Newcastle, but the economic collapse of Newcastle after BHP went offshore 
meant that the once prosperous industrial city of Newcastle actually itself 
became a dormitory suburb of Sydney.

But people were still being encouraged to move to the Central Coast, where 
apparently there was plenty of fresh air, fishing, cheap housing, beaches 
and bowling clubs.

What the Central Coast did not have, but which people were not told about, 
were jobs, facilities for youth, and adequate health care. This did not 
deter the developer friendly NSW Government, of course.

Real estate agents and property developers stood to make a bundle and did, 
as stretch after stretch of rural land was divided up into "estates" with 
names designed to sell rather than reflect reality or local history. Tens 
of thousands of people were lured to the area by the prospect of an 
affordable house amidst "rural surroundings".

Built by developers concerned to maximise profit rather than create a 
viable living community, the project homes on these estates are crowded so 
closely together that their eaves practically touch. The people may be 
living in the country but they have no backyard, no room for their children 
to play outside.

With both partners often commuting to Sydney for work, marriages and 
relationships come under great strain: people are tired and stressed when 
they get home, and there is little to look forward to as even more people 
are moved into the area.

Little wonder that the area produces the statistics I quoted at the 
beginning of this article.

Efforts by the local population to stop the unbridled overdevelopment of 
the region run up against the State Government which sides with the 
developer lobby every time.

Only a fortnight or so ago the Government "relieved" the Council of 
planning control, in order to allow a highly controversial and 
inappropriate high rise development to go ahead on the waterfront at the 
Entrance (to Tuggerah Lakes). That the foreshore should be dedicated public 
land, that no development should be allowed to alienate public access to 
the views of the Lakes, these considerations counted for nothing with the 
NSW Government.

The Council had tried to put the interests of the community first. The 
property developer had the ear of the Minister. It was no contest, really. 
Not in NSW, at any rate.

The people who move here quickly learn that they have been ripped off: the 
government has created a vast urban sprawl, a social crisis that creates 
more crises as relationships fail, families fall apart, anger and 
frustration turns to violence.

The smart operators have made a mint out of the "development" of the area. 
But the overall social failure of the "dormitory suburb" concept has bred 
small scale would-be smart operators who are laying waste many traditional 
practices of the region.

Local produce is still placed out the front of properties for sale to 
passing travellers (take your pick and leave the money in the tin 
provided). But now there are increasing thefts, of dozens of orchids from 
one of our neighbours' roadside stall, bags of oranges, tomatoes and dozens 
of eggs from another neighbour's stall.

In the face of such mean-minded criminality, people tend to give up having 
stalls by the road. The result is a monetary loss to the battlers who had 
the stalls, and a loss of amenity for the rest of us, who used to patronise 
those stalls for fresh fruit and vegies, and eggs.

The fault does not lie with the people in these Central Coast dormitory 
developments. Most are ordinary working or professional folk who are merely 
looking for decent living conditions. The fault lies with a government and 
a system that leaves the creation of those decent living conditions to 
profit-gouging property developers and real estate agents.

But governments these days, whether Labor or Liberal, maintain that 
whatever social problems exist can be taken care of by the "private 
sector". Apparently, if enough people have a conscious need of some service 
(whether it is counselling, child care, youth clubs or supervised 
recreation), some entrepreneur will see the opportunity for making money 
and will supply the wanted "product" or service for a suitable fee.

In other words the people must pay for the solution of their problems. And 
if the people are unable to pay enough money to satisfy the entrepreneurs 
the latter will go elsewhere. Too bad, but that's business.

It is asking too much to expect our present bourgeois parties and 
capitalist governments to adopt the concept of planning the overall 
integrated development of not just housing but related employment, commuter 
travel, education and leisure facilities.

This is the hall mark of socialist society, but it can also be undertaken 
by a progressive government espousing a pro-people program, the kind of 
government and the kind of program one would expect of a Government of 
People's Unity as advocated by the CPA.