Growth continues to be the holy grail governments rely on to keep our economies booming and underpin the quest for higher and higher standards of living. The best example ofcourse is China, but it comes at enormous cost – social, financial and environmental, and terrible waste, which has become increasingly obvious. In China it can be seen in more than fifty new cities, well designed littered throughout the countryside complete with new schools, parks, freeways, more dams and other supporting infrastructure etc but largely empty. These are cities that resemble ghost towns where no one wants to live. This activity certainly created new jobs and huge profits were made (by a select few) but it was all built on debt and occupies land that could be better used to grow food.
We may laugh but China is not alone. Our obsession is also becoming increasingly obvious in the form of many mega infrastructure projects pursued by Victorian and other state governments that are poorly conceived, without proper planning, modelling, or a business case to justify its existence in the first place. Like China many of these have been created to promote economic growth and new jobs for political reasons and like China has created opportunities for smart well connected businesses and individuals to profit at the expense of the broader community. It also perpetuates our business as usual trajectory making it very difficult to achieve our zero emission and other environmental targets.