New Minister reawakens discussion on urban living

With the recent announcement that Alan Tudge is now the Federal Minister for Cities, Urban Infrastructure and Population, certain groups in the property sector have decided to refocus their efforts on examining programs that not only can better urban cities but can also drive more investment into the country.

Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson, for one, highlighted the importance of pushing urban living in major cities via public transport.

“Australian cities have been based on a suburban model for a hundred years but must now develop an urban living model as Sydney and Melbourne have populations over 5 million people,” he said.

“The suburban model was car based with low densities and single use zonings where people drove from residential to commercial zones. A new urban model is evolving based on ‘turn-up-and-go’ metro rail with higher densities and mixed use zones around stations. The federal government’s role should be to support the swing to the urban model by investment in metro rail systems.”

In order for this plan to be realised, Urban Taskforce noted the key role the federal government has to play ⸺specifically in helping to fund both metro rail systems in Australia’s cities as well as faster intercity rail from coastal cities to capital cities.

“These two measures will support growth along coastal strips with good connections to jobs and strengthen major city growth around metro rail systems that also connect to jobs.”

Expounding on the benefits of the initiative, Johnson stated that relating new growth to public transport infrastructure will be a way to retain the current form of existing suburbs.

“The concerns of communities about the changing nature of Australian cities are partly due to the tensions of the transition process and the need for public transport infrastructure and social infrastructure to catch up with the change,” he further noted.

The industry group is confident that, through Minister Tudge, the various levels of government will be more involved in projects such as coming up with a new public transport.