Yes i care! We live in a rural area and there are farms around everywhere which is lovely! Every now and then a new developer tries to come in and plop a housing estate proposal into council. I know people need to live somewhere, I get that but agree there are opportunities that need to be explored outside the very obvious box that is a green patch of farmland!
In my home town in rural NSW the city is spreading up into the hillsides The houses are built on sloping land which presents challenges but at least the farming land... on the whole... is being left alone. There was a big spread in the 1970s but it seems to have halted, largely, in favour of using the hilly ground. It can be done
That would have been D.ick Smiths program. It is a HUGE bone of contention for DH and I and we see it happening more and more often. People just don't realise the extent to which prime agricultural land is being reclaimed for residential/industrial use and that means that there is less land for producing the food we need to sustain ourselves as a country. But of course it is easy for councils and Govts to conveniently overlook those issues when there is big money involved
People want to live where the weather is nice, and that tends to be farming areas. All our capital cities seem to be settled on nice, fertile river deltas or other kinds of good farming land, possibly with the exception of Canberra.
I have a house in an area that *cannot* be farmed, and noone wants to live there. It is cold, windy, the soil is poor and it is almost impossible to establish a garden. It is a bit over 2 hours from Adelaide but because noone wants to live there you can buy houses for as little as $10,000. There are hundred of vacant lots there available for $500 a pop, and my house is for sale for $70,000 - has been for ages. Go a few km down the road to some prime farming land where people WANT to live, and your average house is $200-300k and they're madly subdividing up farms. Because the soil is so nice, everyone has gorgeous gardens.
You first need to convince people not to live where it is nice. That's the Government's job though - all they have to do is relocate a couple of big Government paperwork departments to a big bit of empty land and everyone will follow.
I saw the program and it saddened me too. Travelling across the US was a real eye opener for me, just mile after mile of urban sprawl, McMansions as far as the eye can see.
Incredibly ugly and soulless.
I'm not sure about the use of farmable land for developments though, it does seem pretty bad. I think that water is the major issue the Artisian Basin that you refer to is already having water extracted from it faster than it can recharge. Its a nice idea, the thought of sustainable communities in the desert but its not inline with current politics . I like the idea of using the hilly ground though, makes for housing with extra character too!
I think the problem lies in the fact that people are reluctant to leave the larger areas such as Sydney and Melb so they are driving the demand for it. They are more than happy to live 2hrs from the city centre so long as they can still live in Sydney kwim?
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The houses are built on sloping land which presents challenges but at least the farming land... on the whole... is being left alone. There was a big spread in the 1970s but it seems to have halted, largely, in favour of using the hilly ground. It can be done
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