Debate on Land Use in Sydney - podcasts

People thinking about transition to a post-peak-everything Sydney and questions such as "how do we get around if not by car?", "how do we feed ourselves?", "how to we get off the dirty coal-fired energy grid?", "how does Sydney accommodate dramatic population growth in the next 20 years?" and so on, will inevitably form a view about how our precious land in Sydney should be used.

Should we densify housing in the inner suburbs and along train routes to facilitate greater use of public transport? Should we be protecting the Hawkesbury-Nepean flood-plain "food bowl" of Sydney to assist security of food supply and reduce food miles?, How do we move employment opportunities closer to where we live to reduce the need for travelling long distances and times on a daly basis? Should we be growing food in our local parks or is walking our dogs more important?   These are all questions that challenge the status-quo and our past paradigms of metropolitan land use (i.e poorly planned, profit-driven urban sprawl). Naturally there is a diversity of views on these questions.

This debate and exploration of views has been fostered each day this past week on radio in the Deborah Cameron Morning Show on ABC 702 Sydney. Many viewpoints have been explored and some worthwhile questions have been asked. I highly recommend that you listen to the podcasts of these discussions and inform your own view. The more people we have discussing this important land-use questions the richer the discussion will be. Soooner or later, if we want to be active agents for a positive transition we will need to engage in these debates at our local level, so knowledge of the issues and different perspectives is important.

Below is the link to the ABC website where you can listen to the podcasts. They may not stay up on the site forever, so I suggest you listen to them sooner rather than later, and let the debate continue!

http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2010/03/land-use-conflict.html?site=sydney&program=702_mornings