Introduction

The foundation and growth of Australian cities have been shaped by the availability of reliable supplies of potable water. The rapid growth of Sydney, the first site of settlement following European settlement in 1788, was reflected in the poor quality of housing in areas surrounding the port and the settlement soon exhibited features similar to those in the burgeoning industrial cities of England. The concentration of people and their wastes created ideal conditions for fostering and transmitting diseases, a combination that proved to have devastating effects. Later settlements at Newcastle, Brisbane, and Melbourne exhibited similar conditions. Urban populations grew and with them the demand for reliable supplies of potable water. The nature of the climate in the Australia, with high variability and long droughts, meant supplies were uncertain and led to quests for solutions that could cope. As settlements quickly expanded, they grew into catchments and close to water sources, eventually polluting the supply and forcing a search for newer supplies of potable water beyond the town limits.

In the mid nineteenth century, local reformers, persuaded by arguments expressed by Chadwick in England (Flinn, 1965; Dingle, 2008), saw that the solution to the health problems and to the lack of security of supply was to develop a water services system that provided a reliable supply of potable water and a sewage management system that removed body wastes. It was a beguiling and ‘perfect’ solution, and they campaigned for it.

We have seen from the preceding chapters that the mainland capital cities in Australia have grown rapidly in the post-war period. Although only Sydney and Melbourne are large by international standards all of them are now of a size and complexity exceeding the imagination or expectations of the political leaders who at the end of the nineteenth century arranged the distribution of powers between the States and Commonwealth.

In defining the Constitutional responsibilities of the different levels of government at the end of the nineteenth century, urban issues appear not to have been raised (Deakin 1963). In the discussions which took place it was implicitly assumed that the States would continue with the responsibilities each had as colonies for urban affairs. As sovereign States they would each continue to oversee the distribution of functions between the towns and cities which formed their urban systems and they would each exercise whatever powers they chose over the form and structure of the towns and cities within their territories.

Local Government

The question of local government and its powers never arose. Local government was unevenly developed in the colonies. In some Australian colonies, communities had local government imposed on them, whereas in others colonists strenuously opposed it.

In recent years urban issues which have attracted little attention or sense of urgency since the Whitlam era have risen up the political agenda again. One immediate reason is official concern about the public costs of urban growth, accompanied by the goal of making Australian cities more economically efficient and competitive in terms of the global economy. A second reason has been rising concern over environmental issues which are essentially urban in origin (air, water and noise pollution which are problems of big cities and the environmental impacts and worsening congestion caused by motor traffic). A third, more muted but very real cause of social concern is the impact of unemployment, increasing poverty, inequality of housing provision and living conditions upon associated levels of crime and conflict.

The time is thus ripe for a fresh exploration of the issues and problems bound up with the current growth and functioning of Australian cities. All the major concerns – economic, environmental and social – are examined here in a fresh and original manner. It is not to be expected that a simple or single solution can be found for this diverse range of problems; indeed, one of the conclusions which emerges from several chapters is that the currently fashionable doctrine of creating more compact cities (‘urban consolidation’) as the best cure for urban problems is inadequate for this purpose.