The Aussie backyard is dead.

[willedoo]

Relating to the above post, if you have time on your hands, some patience and a good set of ear plugs, this video gives a good close up look at a typical residential apartment development. All the open green space is nice, but again, would depend on new land being available. An inner urban re-development wouldn't have the space. Another factor is that Europeans have lived like that for a long time, whereas we have a long culture of the individual house and Aussie backyard. It would take time for our mindset to change in that way.

 

 

[onetrack]

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

This our national obsession with individual houses is crazy! 

Better to build townhouses with shared playgrounds, parks, etc.

When people live in close proximity to each other, minor annoyances become the catalysts for violence. When people are crowded together in tower blocks, who takes responsibility for keeping them free from litter? The attitude is, "I didn't put it there, so I'm not going to clean it up."

 

Sure, we get some neighbourhood disputes, mainly caused by one inconsiderate family, but it rarely erupts into violence.

 

Wasn't there panic early on in the COVID crisis when the virus started affecting people in high rise dwellings in Melbourne? Didn't hear of it so much in Sydney for some reason.

[willedoo]

On 09/02/2021 at 3:10 PM, old man emu said:

This is so mid-20th Century that Wikipedia doesn't even have an entry describing what a cubby house is. You have to look at "cubby hole", which is a completely different thing.

ome, there's a project for you. All you need is a Wiki account and start writing. There's a lot you could put on a Wikipedia article about cubby houses.

[Old Koreelah]

10 hours ago, old man emu said:

When people live in close proximity to each other, minor annoyances become the catalysts for violence. When people are crowded together in tower blocks, who takes responsibility for keeping them free from litter? The attitude is, "I didn't put it there, so I'm not going to clean it up."

 

Sure, we get some neighbourhood disputes, mainly caused by one inconsiderate family, but it rarely erupts into violence...

OME you’re right that we’d need a change of national character to cope with higher density housing- which is happening whether we like it or not.

Many of our immigrants seem to be happy with living up close and personal with the neighbours and I have faith that lots of mainstream Australians can also quickly adapt, as we have to so many recent changes.

 

The happiest country is Denmark, where people live in low-rise apartments, often with shared facilities. One of the reported benefits is the integration of age groups; elderly neighbours help out young single mothers and shared meals are common.

 

Contrast that to Australia, where we spend squillions on separate aged care and childcare systems. Where single-parents cry out for support while nearby, lonely old people rattle around big houses.

 

A Clever country?

 

https://denmark.dk/people-and-culture/happiness

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Old Koreelah said:

A Clever country?

Hardly.

 

Perhaps the Australian post-WWII dream is no more. It has been eradicated by governmental lack of forethought. In a country that is, in reality, not far distant from the start of its transformation (is that PC?), why have governments avoided encouraging the development of small towns and villages throughout the habitable areas, instead of going on with the creation of agglomerations of population? 

[Old Koreelah]

48 minutes ago, old man emu said:

...why have governments avoided encouraging the development of small towns and villages throughout the habitable areas, instead of going on with the creation of agglomerations of population? 

Forty years ago I asked this of a planning official and he said it’s much cheaper to provide services to larger population concentrations.

The same economic rationale as feedlots...

and who cares about the side effects?

[old man emu]

Forty years ago it might have been "cheaper", but look at the huge amounts we are forking out now to construct the infrastructure that wasn't put in place when it was so much "cheaper" to do it.

 

Look at the pollution that this concentration of populations has caused. The first, which wasn't even known about 40 years, is urban heating. This has really become an issue in Sydney with the development of the southwest, where there has always been a natural daily air movement pattern back and forth between the Harbour and the area around Camden and The Oaks. All the little boxes of brick and tile act as heat banks, storing solar energy during the day and dissipating it at night to block the natural air flow.

 

Then there is the whole problem of water supply, from the catchments to the sewer outfalls. It has got so bad, that in order to save water in the public storages, new houses now are required to have rainwater tanks. This has the odd effect of reducing the amount of rainwater that feeds the catchments.

[Old Koreelah]

11 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Look at the pollution that this concentration of populations has caused. The first, which wasn't even known about 40 years, is urban heating. This has really become an issue in Sydney with the development of the southwest, where there has always been a natural daily air movement pattern back and forth between the Harbour and the area around Camden and The Oaks...

Coastal Sydney has lots to recommend it as a site for a large city, but the western part of the basin doesn’t. The daily air movements concentrate pollution over the hottest, flattest suburbs. 

[Yenn]

The population of Australia has grown terrificly in the last 40 years, with a lot of those people coming from places that have high population densities, so that is what they look for.

Where I live there are no recent migrants and in the nearest city you seldom see Asian of African faces, except maybe the odd Fillipina with an old Aussie husband. High rise to us is over three storeys.

The backyard is still here but it is getting smaller, but that maybe due to both partners going out to work and not having time to tend a garden. They both work, so that they can afford child care and the labour saving tools for the house and garden.

[ClintonB]

20 hours ago, old man emu said:

When people live in close proximity to each other, minor annoyances become the catalysts for violence. When people are crowded together in tower blocks, who takes responsibility for keeping them free from litter? The attitude is, "I didn't put it there, so I'm not going to clean it up."

 

Sure, we get some neighbourhood disputes, mainly caused by one inconsiderate family, but it rarely erupts into violence.

 

Wasn't there panic early on in the COVID crisis when the virus started affecting people in high rise dwellings in Melbourne? Didn't hear of it so much in Sydney for some reason.

My wife showed me a disturbing video of a man killing both his neighbours over snow on a driveway last weekend. He shot them with a pistol multiple times, then went inside and came back with a long gun (possibly a pump action shot gun) and finished them off whilst other neighbours trying to save them run away. All caught on CCTV, Close proximity and disputes could be the catalyst for this.

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, ClintonB said:

...Close proximity and disputes could be the catalyst for this.

Spreading people far apart doesn’t prevent murderous behavior; there are plenty of examples of rural people going troppo with weapons, often over minor issues that they might have got into proportion if they had close and regular human interactions.

I suspect violent personality discorders are exacerbated by isolation. 

(Perhaps someone has access to statistical evidence.)

 

You know the old First Aid maxim:

   You can only survive three minutes without air

    about three days without water

    three weeks without food...

 

Three months without human contact does some people in.

[onetrack]

The snow-shovelling murders/suicide has little to do with people being jammed into smaller and smaller blocks. The Americans have huge blocks of land by anyones standards.

The problem there, is simply the common murderous American mindset, that it's O.K to get your "Constitutionally guaranteed" firearm, and kill your neighbours over a minor dispute.

This is a regular occurrence in the U.S., they lose 30,000 people a year to firearms deaths, and most are simply disputes that very quickly turn murderous - because Americans are taught from birth, that guns solve every problem. Then their Constitution provides a "right" to own a firearm, no matter how crazy or hot-tempered they are.

We've seen this with the Capitol riots, with Trump supporters screaming out obscenities about the politicians who they want to kill. And they're not idle threats, they mean it.

[nomadpete]

All true, oneT.

However, population pressure aggravates any aggressive behaviour.

 

Numerous studies have shown that animals (I'm pretty sure that includes human animals) all get aggressive to each other when they are under pressure from overpopulation.

 

In modern PC language, it translates to a deterioration of public mental health

Edited February 12, 2021 by nomadpete
Still fighting the auto correct

[Bruce Tuncks]

I agree nomad, I am often struck by how country people are more friendly than city folk. That may be the explanation.