No offence taken Chicago.Chicago wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:48 amAppreciate your reply Rev and hope I don't offend with my direct reply but it is borne out of quite a bit of frustration. Hope you understand.
Adelaide is not a country town. It is a small city. Are you saying there is no place for or benefit in having small or mid size cities? It should all be either big cities and small country towns with nothing in between?
Wouldn't it then be a bit dishonest to be promoting Adelaide as an affordable and less congested alternative to Melbourne and Sydney if the plan then is to eventually turn Adelaide into a big city where the kids of those that come will then face the same problems their parents did before making the move to Adelaide.
And if affordable and less congested is desirable then why change? Can't have a vibrant small city? Got to go Big?
And those that don't want to go Big they don't get a say? They're all wrong, ignorant, negative? They should all move? Where to? Can you name another city in Australia that offers what Adelaide does that is not trying to go Big?
Maybe those Adelaidians that like big cities should move to Melbourne or Sydney, double their mortgages, commute times, perhaps buy themselves a nice tiny flammable apartment or some other one riddled with faults that the developers/builders/politicians don't want to take responsibility for (and will in part be bailed out by the tax payer) and enjoy the good life that Australia's best are able to offer. And once those Adelaidians and others have had their fill of big city adventures and successes maybe they can leave the mess they created to others and move somewhere more liveable. Fair enough?
Don't know the personal circumstances of your relatives and friends in Melbourne, so can't comment there. But complaining is part of human nature, everyone does it. Nobody likes being stuck in traffic for hours to and from work, or waiting for care at the emergency department or facing a mountain of debt that will most likely take a lifetime to pay back, or feeling insecure about your job when you have a family to support, and that is the situation for many people in Melbourne thanks to Big Business and their ways. And people are complaining, plenty, that's why the Government made the token gesture of reducing Permanent Migration down to 160,000 per year whilst allowing temporary visa holder numbers to balloon.
You want to grow some cities, sure, but do it right.
What has happened in Australia for the past 20 years has been nothing more than a cash grab by the rich with poor regard for the little guy.
For me it's not about who gets a say and who doesn't. This is supposed to be a major city, but too often it is held to ransom by self interest groups of small minded individuals, such as the parklands preservation group, or by councillors on the Adelaide City Council. It's been relegated to being classed as part of regional Australia.
If these people do not want the infrastructure, the 'big buildings', that a large, or main city features, then why are they living in a main..or major.. city? There's lots of country towns where these things that are problems for them, wont be problems.
I agree, the growth needs to be handled properly. The economy is shot, population growth is almost stagnant..What's being done to fix any of this? Nothing, and there's our problem..hence my comment about our local politicians being useless.
Perhaps governments should look beyond Adelaide, to a long term plan to develop another city in South Australia into a major city either from scratch or from an existing 'town'. Plan everything right from the outset. How it will grow, where it will grow, the industries that will be attracted to invest and setup there, the transport infrastructure that will be needed and where and integrated, etc.
The target shouldn't be foreigners, but Australians from the east coast population centres. Overcrowded apparently? If all those problems you list, are really that problematic for people, why do they still move there in their droves? Because the economic opportunities there are better of course. Well, if they had an alternative, would they take it?
How is it that other countries are able to build new cities from scratch and populate them? Is it something in the Australian psyche that sees people continue to flood to the east coast predominantly? Or perhaps that the majority of economic prosperity lays waiting there, and it needs to be spread beyond the east coast.
Perhaps part of the problem is the psyche of South Australians..maybe that needs to change as much as anything else does first.