Sydney, Australia is a fantastic city. There are views of the water everywhere thanks to a harbor that folds over 40 km inland from the entrance to the ocean. The beaches, all 62 of them, are fabulous and the water is warm most of the year. And if you get tired of the beach, there’s a World Heritage Natural Forest an hour away in the Blue Mountains.

Not surprisingly, there are approximately 4 million Sydney residents. Most live in suburbs spread over a 12,145 km2 metropolitan area, leaving plenty of space between and within homes, and open areas to enjoy. Almost everyone is within walking distance of a park. Add a bit of sun, those infamous beaches, and you have the ideal city.

Tourists also like Sydney. Every year, the city welcomes about 10 million tourists, 3 million of them foreigners.

The place is so popular that in the last decade around half a million people have decided to become Sydneysiders, the local name for the residents. This is roughly 1,000 newcomers per week, a growth rate of 15%, slightly higher than the rate of increase for Australia’s overall population over the same period.

In addition to arrivals, social trends have seen families become smaller, dividing faster than they merge. And as young people stay home longer, they eventually want to move.

In the coming decades, Sydney will need to supply 640,000 new homes just to meet projected demand.

While developers may be smiling, this number has state and local government planners waving their hands in the air. Even in a place with so much space, such a sustained influx puts a huge strain on infrastructure, especially transportation.

It also creates environmental challenges.

The supply of water, sewage services and energy must increase as the city grows. And there comes a point where utility delivery systems are past their buy-sell date. They can no longer be upgraded or expanded and a completely new system is needed.

However, as with Sydney and its discharge of sewage into the open sea, the system is no longer acceptable.

640,000 homes and the roads, railways, businesses and public spaces that support them need space. Some will squeeze into existing suburbs; others will be greenfield developments. The conservation of the natural habitat is a challenge when the concreted area is expanded.

In Sydney, built-up area is encroaching on fertile agricultural land that has traditionally provided a large proportion of the horticultural produce consumed by the city’s residents and those 10 million visitors. Planners must make the difficult choice between food production and living space. Good options need local input and a clear regional strategy.

Sydney also has some peculiar problems, like what to do about a resident population of grey-headed flying foxes, an endangered but nuisance species of fruit bat about the size of a small cat, that roost in the botanical gardens that sit outside. the shadow of the CBD Skyscraper.

Then there is the real environmental problem of the city’s footprint. Water, power, food and waste cannot be generated in the Sydney Basin. A much larger area of ​​land is needed to supply the resources and places are needed to dispose of the waste.

There is also the issue of greenhouse gas emissions from lifestyles that use fossil fuel-based electricity and transportation.

It’s a long list of challenges that put pressure on the integrity of the environment.

Sydney is a moderately sized city by modern standards, similar to Phoenix, Arizona. It’s half the size of Chennai, a third the size of London, a quarter the size of Shanghai, and a pothole compared to Tokyo, the world’s largest agglomeration with 34 million people.

The significant statistic is that there are at least 70 cities in the world that have a larger population than Sydney. Urbanization is a big problem.

The real environmental issue is that we have to have this development. The world population of 7 billion will peak at between 9 and 12 billion and, to help maintain an environment that can support them; we probably want most of these additional people to live in cities.

Attention to how we make these cities viable and how we can manage their environmental footprints should be a priority for all of us.

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