Germany leads way in creating auto-ban suburbs

[tcl]

Well, I never say high rise living is an improvement in terms of quality of life, but it's not a disaster either. Why I am so mad is that I just can't stand people thinking high rise style (simply without your own garden space) generate crimes and lead to bad health, as these have been disproved by the Hong Kong example.

Had much of a look around the Carlton area recently?

[hk_ayu]

Had much of a look around the Carlton area recently?

For Carlton area, I have been to areas around Lygon St and Swanston St only. But I don't think the buildings there are really high-rises, even along Swanston St. Students make up the major population in the area and the area is not bad from my impression and from one of my friends who live there.

The most dangerous areas in Melbourne are Frankston, Dandenong, Footscray and Broadmeadows. High rise areas like St. Kilda Road boost one of the safest.

I still haven't seen any solid evidence that "people without their own garden tend to commit crimes". Instead, I saw many evidences that the crime rate in an area is inversely proportional to the quality of the population in that area.

Recently, I moved from a house in a south-eastern suburb to one of those high rises on St. Kilda Road. I don't feel I am more likely to commit crimes or get drug addiction after losing my garden.

[tcl]

Had much of a look around the Carlton area recently?

For Carlton area, I have been to areas around Lygon St and Swanston St only. But I don't think the buildings there are really high-rises, even along Swanston St. Students make up the major population in the area and the area is not bad from my impression and from one of my friends who live there.

You clearly haven't looked at the 20-odd storey high-rise built on the corner of Rathdowne and Princes Streets.
Also, there's another tower on the eastern side of Wellington Street, a few doors south of Johnston Street.

The most dangerous areas in Melbourne are Frankston, Dandenong, Footscray and Broadmeadows. High rise areas like St. Kilda Road boost one of the safest.

I still haven't seen any solid evidence that "people without their own garden tend to commit crimes". Instead, I saw many evidences that the crime rate in an area is inversely proportional to the quality of the population in that area.

And you aren't considering that the two high-rises I mentioned above are/were housing commission housing, and have/had pretty shocking crime stats...

[tcl]

For a start, Hong Kong is a tiny island (barely more than 1000 square km) and has managed to squeeze 7 million people in.

Hong Kong has a total area of 1,108 sq km. 70% of land is uninhabited country parks.
10% of land is traditional rural village. Almost 7 million people squeezed in the remaining 20% of land.

Ok, so that means that instead of ~1000 sq km's, it's 200 sq km's for almost of 7 million people. That means that the population density is 5x greater than the 6k/sq km I mention, and is 30k/sq km - this is even WORSE!!!

Despite Hong Kong's reputation of being intensely urbanised, the territory has made much effort to promote a green environment.

With 7 million people crammed in so much, it's not possible to have a road network capable of handling anywhere near that many people, so they have to go for public transport and non-motorised vehicle options instead of most people having their own car.

This brings me back to the original topic being discussed in your original posting.

Australia is MUCH more spread out, even in the most densely populated areas it's nothing like what Hong Kong has.
If you were to combine the populations of Melbourne and Sydney you'll have about the same number of people as there are in Hong Kong.
The outer reaches of the Melbourne Metropolitan area are no less than 20km's from the GPO, and extend to 40K's or more. Sydney, I imagine, wouldn't be much different from Melbourne (Only visited it a few times briefly, never lived there).
This means that for every person in Melbourne OR Sydney on average they have to travel many kilometres more to get from their home to their work than anyone in Hong Kong.
The cost to create the public transport system to cater for such a spread out population is going to be far greater. This means that the profit margins are greatly reduced, resulting in a slower accumulation of funds to expand the system to cater for more people.
Because the population is spread out more, they have to travel further to get TO whatever mode of public transport is closest, and in many cases this means that they need a car. This in turn lessens the need for them to use public transport, so there's even less revenue being made.
IF the Government introduced high taxes on private motor vehicles capable of carrying more than 2 people, then the roads would be a LOT less congested, but the public transport system wouldn't cope with the massive increase in usage and would completely crash in a heap.
IF the Government is really serious about going green, then they'll need to develop an extensive underground metro-style rail system and get it built fairly soon.
BUT the cost to do that is simply enormous as the distances that it needs to cover are so (relatively) vast.

What the Government COULD do pretty quickly is build some orbital rail lines instead of the badly thought out idea of using orbital bus routes.
This would allow an easier interchange with the existing rail system (if well planned) as well as allow a MUCH greater quantity of passengers to be carried than could be done by busses.

[hk_ayu]

This means that for every person in Melbourne OR Sydney on average they have to travel many kilometres more to get from their home to their work than anyone in Hong Kong.
The cost to create the public transport system to cater for such a spread out population is going to be far greater. This means that the profit margins are greatly reduced, resulting in a slower accumulation of funds to expand the system to cater for more people.

Hong Kong is not what u think. People there have to travel long distance to work and rail lines are costly to build.

Hong Kong has a very special geography and she's not like Melbourne or other typical cities that have a flat landscape. As a result, the suburban development of Hong Kong scatters around (cf spreads out) the territory as seperated towns isolated by huge mountains, uninhabited country parks or seas. The construction of roads and railways always require complicated earth work to drill through those mountains. There are already 12 long long tunnels (the longest one 10.1 km) that links up different areas and 5 more will be built in the next 10 years. One of them will be the 26 km rail tunnel that runs entirely in the mountain through to the boarder and forms part of the national high speed rail network of China.

Many under-water tunnels and huge bridges were built too as Hong Kong is composed of 3 main islands and the CBD is divided into two by the famous Victoria Harbour. There are 6 tunnels under Victoria Harbour and one more will soon be built.

All these geographical barriers greatly add up to the travel distance and the cost of infrastructure. Despite these disadvantages, Hong Kong infrastructure boosts one of the best in the world in terms of safety and efficiency and the city is described as an infrastructure paradise.

[jixor]

I think the big difference between new European development VS Melbourne is that European cities are promoting very well thought out civic master plans that dont just involve throwing up random apartments. I could explain it a lot better but there is a vast ammount of websites and books explaining stuff like new urbanism. Take something like Docklands, what a joke and perhapps more importantly wasted opportunity.

[traindreamer]

The cost to create the public transport system to cater for such a spread out population is going to be far greater. This means that the profit margins are greatly reduced, resulting in a slower accumulation of funds to expand the system to cater for more people.
.

I have no arguments about how or where people choose to live, but remember all of the roads built for motor cars to drive on them, seem to be free but in fact they cost millions of dollars. Roads of course cost more than building a new railway line as every house has a road to it.
Roads are not free, we pay for them.
People Transport, we pay for as well.

As people live further away, do you hear them saying "No don't build a road to our house because it will cost your money"?
Both choices cost, nothing is free as the road lobby want's you to think.