While there are many similarities between Australians and Americans and our countries and their landscapes, there are differences, too. One of the biggest is the size of the population relative to the land space available. In Australia there are a lot less people to fill about the same amount of land, approximately 21 million Aussies (on approximately 3 million square miles) vs. 300 million-plus Americans (on about 3.8 million square miles).
Americans are always iffy about welcoming new immigrants due to population concerns but Australians are a little more open-minded. As long as any population shift of any type doesn’t further overcrowd its two largest cities — Sydney and Melbourne.
Doug Dingwall, writing for the Australian online publication The Punch took the question to average Australians about where would be the best place to build a new city if the Australian population increased significantly and its eastern seaboard, primarily Sydney and Melbourne, couldn’t handle the overflow.
Answers ranged from on the west coast “somewhere between Perth and Broome,” to “building over” Canberra (which is kind of the national joke, the way say Cleveland or Fresno is in the US). Expanding regional centers like Ballarat in Victoria or maybe Broken Hill in New South Wales could be options, but as another respondent said, those places were “boring”, and they lack a great deal of employment options, too.
For now the question of where to build a new city in Australia remains purely a hypothetical one. The 21 million population however is expected to climb to 36 million by 2050.
Source: The Punch. Photo courtesy of KazzaDrask Media.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
