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Comments
Mary Drost (not verified)
Tue, 2012-02-07 13:59
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Jakarta: Is this where Melbourne is heading? (Mary Drost)
Geoffrey Taylor
Tue, 2012-02-07 23:55
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In fact, Melbourne is nearly there.
It seems that Melbourne is closer to having Jakarta's nightmare of gridlocked traffic than many people realise.
The following was written in the Melbourne Age article Gridlock choking life out of city of 27 May; 2007.
The following was written in the Herald Sun article Brace yourself, highways to hell coming of 5 Feb 2012 nearly five years later:
Our political rulers and their corporate masters have caused this by imposing population growth and continuing to do so. How they have gained from reducing by so much the quality of life of each Melburnian on average and what they stand to further gain by continuing to to do so is difficult to understand.
Yet they must have gained. Otherwise, why would they continue with these policies?
That they gain from reducing the overall quality of life of all citizens shows that our economy, based, not on the production of actual wealth, but on land speculation, property development and financial paper shuffling, is gravely dysfunctional,
quark
Wed, 2012-02-08 10:05
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Jakarta
To add to Mary's population picture, Jakarta's population was 800,000 in 1945, just before independence and grew to 8.2 million by 1990.From a very quick "read around" it would appear that Jakarta's population has grown rapidly and much faster than the country's over all growth rate because of migration (presumably from within Indonesia) into the city. It appears the governor of Jakarta made it a closed city in about 1970 with strict entry criteria but the influx has continued. In one of the Jakarta newspapers I read that the fertility rate is 2.1 and they want to get this down to 1.8. Indonesia grows more slowly than Australia.(because Australia doubles its population growth rate with immigration into the country) According to another article in the Jakarta Post, Should Jakarta be a closed city? of 18 Sep 12, some are even worrying though about an aging population with anticipated population decline ! Sound familiar?
Having spent a total of about 3 weeks in Jakarta -one week in the mid 1980s and another 2 in about 2005, I found it an unwieldy, un-walkable, slightly overwhelming city with very interesting pockets and great contrasts between rich and poor. In the 1980s, staying in wealthy Menteng I was fascinated by the broken glass embedded on the tops of some of the walls around the great houses as a deterrent to any trespassers. As though that were not enough, the friend I stayed with had a 24 hour guard outside his house. When I returned to visit with the same friend 20 years later he lived in a different suburb, still had a 24 hour guard but no glass. I have noticed an increasing number of gated communities being built in Melbourne. This would have been a totally alien concept 30 years ago when really there was not a yawing gap between the quality of life between rich and poor and people of quite modest means could command a generous amount of private space of their own. We could be headed in the direction of Jakarta. Like anywhere Jakarta is livable if you are rich and can get around in air conditioned chauffeur driven comfort. If you are a becak driver sleeping in your vehicle every night as I believe some do, then I think life would be very much a matter of day to day survival and trying to take in more calories than those expended in using pedal power to taxi people around the spider like city.
Sheila Newman
Wed, 2012-02-08 18:04
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Sustainable Population Aust stall Melbourne 17-19 Feb
Big Australian (not verified)
Wed, 2012-02-08 21:25
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Plenty of spin-work for Andrew McLeod in Africa with RioTinto
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