The rapidly growing population has been identified as one of the more immediate issues that most major Australian cities are set to face, with the population projected to reach 50 million by 2066. As current infrastructure construction is struggling to keep up with this growth, it is apparent that current methods of city planning need to change.
As reported by Infrastructure Australia, the Australian Government when developing cities have a tendency to develop outwards rather than consolidate, which leaves these communities poorly designed and often lacking in necessary communal services. These suburban communities are also removed from the majority of work found in the cities, and there is a growing demand to live in the inner cities to reap the social and economic benefits that cities have to offer. With this in mind, we are now seeing the dissatisfaction with ‘suburban’ and the need to turn to ‘urban’. Community dissatisfaction is far from the only consequence of this poor planning – the report finds that usable sprawl will place further pressure on road congestion, and will cost an additional $20 billion by 2031 ($18.9 billion to $38.7 billion).
This trend is evident across the majority of Australian cities with Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth failing to keep up population demand and infrastructure growth whilst absorbing three quarters of Australia’s growing population. As previously mentioned, there needs to be a shift from ‘suburban’ to ‘urban’ by further investing in high rise and unit development to consolidate and centralise cities. This will help satisfy the social and economic needs of the Australian people whilst providing a viable, sustainable and affordable solution to future housing issues. Fortunately, we are starting to see these changes as unite development is becoming increasingly popular.
We at Structerre have been involved in numerous Suburban & Urban developments, providing a multi-disciplinary service spanning from Geotechnical to Civil to Structural Engineering to Energy and Inspection Services. Our experience and ability to deliver an all in one package for our clients is what makes us stand out, as we value add by working with our clients to deliver on build costs and time savings.
References:
Article 1
Article 2