New Australian city?

[tajmahal]

Hi what do you think of building a whole new city full of skyscrapers in Australia?? No height restrictions no nimby protestors. Take a look at www.libertycitygroup.org

[tajmahal]

this post has had quite a few views, is there no feedback? it would be good to hear what others think.

[Welkin]

Very interesting website and concept. Most cities start out as small communities and then grow over the next 50-100 years as the local economy grows and develops. Building the buildings of a city of 1 million from scratch can be done if you have hundreds of billions in capital, but building a sustainable, multi-layer economy from scratch could pose a major problem. Unless you have a massive local employer, or natural resource like oil, that could employ 100,000 people quickly and build pretty much a company town (like Dubai); who is going to fill all your office buildings, where will all the service personnel come from, where do you get all the infrastructure (grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations...). Do you build everything then wait for it to fill up or do your first settlers have to wait until things are built? Even the world's biggest cities started out as small villages and grew infrastructure as the village grew. I don't think you can build a mega city from scratch on the north coast of Australia and expect it to work, but you could build a nice little city over the next 20-30 years. Rome was not built in a day.

[novaCJ]

I don't see this as being particularly attractive. The north coast of Australia is the area with all the stinging, biting, deadly creatures both on land and in water. Not to mention the climate isn't exactly attractive(to me, anyway) and as the above poster said, the creation of a city of this magnitude from scratch has never really been done before. Sure, there have been boomtowns, and rapidly growing cities, but they all had a reason to exist. Building a city for the sake of building a city probably won't work, which this seems to be trying to achieve.

[BIMBAM]

National capitals are the best example of planned cities like this being created, but for the most part, I prefer the cities that grow organically through capitalism. They're always the most dynamic cities, the ones that provide the most diverse opportunities to the people who are born there and grow up there, and want to have generations of family live there. These are the cities that are most flexible and can adapt to changing conditions. You can do it with enough capital, but it probably won't be the ideal use of those resources or people.

[tajmahal]

thanks for your feedback guys. I know some are against and some are for, but to those who are still against it, can i just explain some of the reasoning for it?

Easiest way to get a new big city in Australia is to start with a clean slate, instead of trying to turn existing towns into big cities. We need to get the debate going in the wider community, to make this the world's first crowdsourced city. Think how innovative it could be then. That means getting input from people with all kinds of professional backgrounds.

I'd like everyone who supports the idea to join in the discussion so you can have your say on what the ideal city would look like. Virtually every profession / area of expertise needs a say - e.g. if you work in defence, how would a new city in the north affect defence planning? If you're in urban planning or architecture, how can the new city be a world leader in design and livability? If you work in manufacturing, how can the new city foster a proper export-led manufacturing base e.g. through SEZ's? I think everyone who is knowledgeable in their field needs to have say - no matter what field it is. Because a prominent and cosmopolitan city needs to cater to everyone.

Let me know if you want to contribute - details on the website. And if you've just opened this thread, the website we're talking about is http://libertycitygroup.org/ a website for the world's first crowdsourced city, built in Oz top end.

To those forumers who said Australia should grow its existing cities, yes I agree with you, it should. But for social/political and myriad other reasons growing existing cities is capped at about 1.5-1.7% year in terms of population growth and that's pushing the limits, growth any faster than that starts to cause huge electoral backlash and eventually it would be stopped politically. Almost all Aust. govt's have wanted growth but are bound by this constraint. But Australia needs to grow - it should have an economy the size of Germany or Japan's. Main constraint though is population growth. Best way round it is to create new cities.

If you don't believe me about this point go ask your average Aussie neighbour what he /she thinks about turning the 'hood into a zone for mega dense high rises. Guaranteed most will say no. Fact is Aust. cities are extremely limited due to mentality of low density living which is already entrenched. Only way out is a clean break with the norm by starting a new city.

If the pioneers could do it hundreds of years ago, why can't we?

[WibblyWobbly]

Don't want to call it liberty city. Sounds too American. Can't we go for a cool sounding aboriginal name?

[linum]

Darwin - if it had the population and infastructure... being so close to ASIA... has potential??