Growing pains a price of affluence?

August 12, 2008
Bernard Salt

I have a question to ask Melburnians.

How is it that previous generations managed to (eventually) deliver urban infrastructure to support population growth at 2.5 per cent a year, but we struggle with 1.6 per cent? ...

Modest rates of population growth may well be a good for the present generation of Melburnians but I question whether this isn't going to have longer term repercussions.

Global migrants will ultimately add their critical mass, their energy and their tax-paying capacity to another world city.

This would leave Melbourne in the future a very well managed and pleasant city that is pre-eminently "liveable" but perhaps not the sort of place capable of generating new business opportunities created by the unique combination of critical mass and the energetic contribution of migrants.

Typical globalist: he poses the token question to the public, and then answers it himself. There's no water, people don't want perpetual development, and there is no social cohesion anymore. They don't want to live in a "world city". The are no benefits of immigration to per capita income. Bernard Salt has growth on the brain.