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March 18, 2008
This is what cities could become. It s a caricature of a modernist city for sure, but it has enough reality to make us feel uncomfortable about what is happening to our cities.
Tandberg
People often argue that the car is king. Thus Michael Warren in The Australian:
On the outer mortgage belt of urban Australia the car is king. Distance and population density make the most enthusiastic public transport systems expensive and inefficient. Working families drive to work, to sport and to the shops because they have no alternative.Fuel consumption in Australia is highly inelastic to price. In other words, no matter how expensive petrol gets, people just spend more of their disposable income on it, grumble, and get on with things.
So how did this state of affairs come about? An example from Adelaide will show why. the railway track from the outer suburban fringe of Victor Harbor to Adelaide was pulled up in the 1970s by enlightened bureaucrats captured by the car industry.
Since there is no fast rail available people commute in their cars. Nor will the state government invest heavily in public transport because of the dead hand of Treasury. That is why the car is king.
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