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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/31/brisbane-urban-expansion-sprawl-seq-queensland>
"Almost two decades ago, the Queensland historian Peter Spearritt issued a dire
warning. If planning attitudes didn’t change, Brisbane would become “the 200
kilometre city” – a giant conurbation, solid suburbs from Noosa to the New
South Wales border, causing traffic chaos and dooming millions to a worse
standard of living.
“I don’t think many people realised just how dramatic continuing suburban
sprawl would be,” he says.
Queensland’s governments did put some legal limits on untrammelled expansion.
But with the city facing an epic housing shortage, many planners are now
concerned the new conservative state government will return to the city’s
historic sprawl-or-nothing approach.
The government has started test drilling on a proposed underground freeway
designed to permit new suburbs in farmland west of Caboolture.
At $14bn, the four-lane north-west transport corridor would be the most
expensive road project in the city’s history.
The first new suburb, Waraba, is set to boast 70,000 residents once complete.
Spearritt, now an emeritus professor of urban history at the University of
Queensland, says legal limitations on sprawl are crucial for a city with few
geographical barriers – unlike Sydney, Brisbane doesn’t have national parks on
three of its four sides.
“There were no green space barriers, and that makes it much easier to just
basically develop former agricultural land forever,’ he says."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
