Sydney's Apocalypse now: fear and loathing in Bondi jungle

Young people seem to be having indoor fun a lot more lately. And outdoors too, if my eyes are not deceived, on the beaches and in the parks. Learned academics are talking of a "baby bounce in the inner city".

We heard recently that Sydney's schools are bursting at the seams and headed for unheralded expansion.

Articles talk about the State schools, but there are also noises in the press about the expansion of private schools, and the consequences for residents. There have been angry, agitated arguments about the need for a new State high school, where it will be, and who pays for the land.

Catholic schools, too, are expanding in a wide range of locations.

Around almost any school around 3pm on a school day there are masses of cars, often bulky four wheel drives which are apparently necessary for parents in their desire to prevent children from walking unsupervised. I can think of three large high schools within two kilometres of my house which have bad traffic jams at school opening and closing times.

This is a problem experienced also in Brisbane and I'd expect, Melbourne.

The high cost of child care is only one reason why people are so keen to get their children into school at age five or earlier. Meantime, there are many different ages for school starting. When we lived in Canada my youngest started school at age 6. And went to school only from 9 till 12. But economic pressures - increasing food costs, the rocketing cost of housing, gas and electricity, and the ever-pestilent GST - means young parents need to get both partners working and children taken care of as fast and as cheaply as possible. We have an explosion of more and more young kids in the eastern suburbs, and probably in the whole central part of the city from La Perouse to Strathfield and Manly.

Sydney's high house prices are well known. There are routine stories in the press before and after the weekend talking of amazing prices, prices which exceeded expectations. You might almost imagine that these stories were written by real estate agents eager to find more people wanting to sell their houses.

We are becoming like rats shoved into a diminishing and noisier cage. One amusing development was a story in the Herald detailing the increasing noise from planes over the eastern suburbs. Noise "targets" were announced by the regulators of air space. But the targets have never been met. The usual spokesman was found to say (no doubt with a sincere smile) that the airport "worked closely with communities to mitigate noise". People in some suburbs said that they could not talk on the phone while planes thundered overhead.

Alas, within a week someone was found to write a story denying all this, saying that the noise was nothing more than a faint hum.

We must have imagined that whining, grinding noise that can come overhead every 8 or 9 minutes. The racket of helicopters thrumming overhead at 8am last Sunday was not anyone's fault except someone's need to watch a marathon, though I thought briefly we were already in a re-run of the movie "Apocalypse Now!"

More and more developments are proposed on what was public land, or semi-public. An example is the strangely-named Twin Towers proposed to be erected on Waverley Bowling Club.

We have seen earlier that Centennial Park is now run by people driven to make money by having noisy rock concerts, marathons, fun runs, children's entertainment or anything else which makes money so the poor Park can survive.

Once again, the Park's website talks of community consultation, working with the community, listening to local voices and similar. There is even a Noise Management Plan.

But what happens on the day (as the footballers say) is a different matter. "Sorry, the wind blew the noise right inside your house" , or "We didn't expect that the lead guitarist would turn the sound up…" and so on.

We are talking about an area in which clearly, more and more people want to live. As one estate agent told me, "people get off the plane every day and come to me wanting housing, and I can tell you, they don't want to live in Mt. Druitt" (a suburb west of Parramatta in which most eastern suburbs residents are unlikely to have set foot). So we get worse traffic. Sunday as a quiet day is long gone. Instead we are getting traffic jams so bad the streets going towards Bondi are jammed, as far back as Paddington and Woollahra.

More people, more traffic, more demand for housing, more space needed in schools and hospitals. Growth is outstripping the work of planners and policy makers. Of course, as we learn from the Independent Commission Against Corruption, planning is subverted by property developers and the brown-paper envelopes full of cash that they use to help politicians make decisions.

Where does all this lead?

Let's have a quick stab at future prospects for this part of the inner city.

First, we are packing more and more people into a limited space. Housing prices will continue to rise. Arguments persist about why this is so. Foreigners driving up prices? Investors cashing in on negative gearing? People just wanting to live near amenities? Many reasons are being debated.

But the social consequences will be huge, as I've tried to suggest.

Second, Sydney is screaming for decent infastructure. State Governments have tried to pull the wool over our eyes. We've had tons of reports and announcements and blueprints. A second airport debated and small libraries full of reports on where it might be. A new line with trains running ten times an hour? you name it. Much hoo-ha has been made about new light rail on already choked streets in Randwick, Paddington, and George Street. But new 'heavy' rail lines have not been built. And despite much criticism, the Abbott Government is funding roads, not rail.

Sydneyneeds an extensive underground, just as do cities of comparable size: Paris, London, New York City. Everyone is wasting time and money sitting in traffic, on basically the same road and rail system we had in the 1930s, give or take a few tunnels, a freeway or two, and the airport line which costs the best part of $10 per person per trip.

Third, schools will face more and more pressures brought on by more kids in less space. One sad fact is that State schools solve problems by building demountables in playgrounds, ensuring that kids have less space to exercise. A number of NSW State Governments have foolishly sold off precious land, or whole schools, when enrolments fell. But the demand for education is elastic. Meanwhile (as we saw above) Catholic schools are buying more land. And elite private schools can boast that they offer kids much more space to move in. Some, like Scots College in Sydney, take boys off-campus to rampage around in the bush and learn in the open air. This can be justified in a number of ways in terms of increasingly over-protective parents, or just accounting for male biology and surges of testosterone, as Catalyst argued last week on ABC TV.

In a country debating the rise of obesity, we must find ways of keeping our kids – and adults- physically active. Most kids should be active most of the day. We will need to emphasise movement in teacher education courses which are already packed with umpteen must-have perspectives and understandings.

Fourth, just when we need a thoughtful, critical media to point the finger at greedy developers and land sharks, the media is becoming full of yes-men and toadies. Almost no strong voices are found to shame bad developments. The Sydney Morning Herald becomes packed with silly stories. And every nearly every story is full of "I think.." " I feel"… "We went…" "I enjoyed a relaxing day in the spa at..."

Men are getting fake tans. Some woman tells us she isn't a feminist. Men's Health magazine panders to male vanity. Surely Sydney's intelligent readers deserve better than this!

Yawn. The ABC seems incapable of meeting the challenge. Funding cuts are being announced. And ABC management wants to cut the programs which watch over State politics. It seems intent on feeding us more and more inane quiz shows and old British stuff (the last time I checked the date on the tedious "QI" I'd just avoided, it showed a date of 2003, if my Roman numerals are correct. Maybe they should show the date in some long-dead Aztec language , so nobody can recognize it?

Finally, we will get more and more arguments about traffic jams, noise, squabbles about planning, and more and more development. While roads get more crowded and more and people move in with their "Balmain bulldozers" (4WDs) and demand amenities, we will become more and more like animals scratching at each other in the urban jungle.