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Thursday, September 16, 2010

'Waterhaven' #video #environment #housingshortages #publicpolicy #Madden ...more farmland being sucked up by housing shortages and unsustainable developments


This a little video of my observations of the construction of 'Waterhaven' along the highway between Melbourne and Geelong...it speaks for itself really. It says something on the current housing developments in the outskirts of Melbourne or anywhere for that matter, where planning departments and developers are allowing the installation of a fake lake in the middle of the highway to be the incentive for people to move here and isolate themselves further in their new 'community'. Any notion of building a sustainable development here or anywhere is a distant option for the money hungry corporate developers and government planning authorities - who care little about the potential residents, stuck in the middle of nowhere, driving in their cars for everything, and less about the environment which they are destroying. The 'water', a fake lake, is being formed by digging a giant trench in once prominent farmland on the outskirts of Melbourne and the 'haven' I'm assuming will be created in the surrounds of this trench and pseduo bridge which an array of families will no doubt move into, as it constitutes the only option they have in obtaining affordable accommodation. Yet its fake atmosphere and damaged environment is probably not something they would choose to be involved if other accommodation could be provided in sustainable and urban environments. It seems that when you drive through these spaces which are presented as pseudo 'places' you may think that people want to live in these cloned villages with identical brick houses, no backyards and cheap fittings made to look like an upmarket version of a fantastic furniture catalogue; yet it makes you think, where would people live if they had the option to have a different looking house, a backyard or dare I say it, even incorporate the existing farmland into their own backyard and allow them the opportunity to generate their own power and grow their own produce, rather than spend their limited disposable income at the single supermarket chain that charges them to import their banannas from asia or beyond. Is this where and how the next generation of home owners want to live?

This is a topic I will write more on and discuss more broadly at a later date, in the meantime, enjoy watching your farmland being sucked up by a multi-national developer and be replaced with roads to drive your 3 cars on and a far less expensive and less detailed copy of a film set from The Truman Show.


Just some thoughts people, where do you want to live?

Posted via email from PunchyP

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