Demographer Joel Kotkin has mounted a long-term crusade against urban planners and other advocates of residential densification. We have featured his jeremiads against this trend here in the U.S. on several occasions. COTTonLINE shares his passion.
In a recent City Journal article Kotkin takes his crusade to Australia where planners are trying to suppress suburbs of the single-family-house-on-a-lot variety and replace them with high density housing strung along public transportation lines. The obvious aim is to get people out of their automobiles and into streetcars and subways, out of houses and into apartments, out of suburbs and into urban living.
Along the way Australia has emulated the U.S. in sending much of its manufacturing capacity overseas. This has resulted in a reduction in the proportion of Australians who can make a reasonable claim to a middle class lifestyle. It’s likely to result in a falling birth rate as well. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.
