Here’s a little urban development history lesson. When so-called “green fields” land,say a dairy farm or orchard,is rezoned from agricultural land to housing,it creates,out of thin air,a massive increase in its value. Developers like to call it “uplift”.
This occurs by the stroke of an official pen. Now you see a farm,abracadabra,now you see a gigantic pile of cash. It is a functioning magic pudding of wealth creation.
Up to 2010,a small portion of this windfall gain was levied to pay for the facilities all the residents of these new areas would need to make their communities habitable:things like libraries,community centres and swimming pools. The levies went to councils,which built the facilities.
Nobody lost anything by this arrangement. Developers factored the levy into the price they offered the farmer for the land. The farmer still got paid several multiples of his or her wildest dreams of how much the land might be worth.
In 2010,this provision was abolished. No amount of pleading with the Liberal-National government over the last 12 years has persuaded them to lift a finger to correct this extreme inequity.
Instead,thanks to relentless rezoning and land releases by the NSW government,we have vast new housing estates with homes built cheek-by-jowl. The streets are even too narrow to park in,so fixated are the developers on jamming in the absolute maximum possible number of dwellings.