Wollongong in 50 Years

Okay, so the Property Council of Australia's rep in the Illawarra David Lang has called for a discussion on future population targets for the Illawarra region, with his first target on the table being 500,000 by 2050.

The Greens have come back and said no way, it will make Wollongong look like the Goldcoast with 20 storey high apartment blocks blighting the skyline.

To be honest I think both of them have issues.

Firstly, you can't talk about a population target without talking about a vision for the region. Population is but one part of any plan for the Illawarra, and while it is a huge part of the plan it should not be dealt with in isolation.

Secondly if the Greens think that the Illawarra isn't going to hit 500,000 people by the middle of the century I have bad news for them. According to the 2006 census, the Wollongong Local Government Area is tracking a 2.6% annual population growth which gives us almost a million people by 2050. Even if we lower the rate to 1% over the next 39 years we're looking at around 490000 people.

Any discussion has to work from the point that Wollongong and the Illawarra is going to grow, we're simply too close to Sydney for anything else to happen. 

So with that in mind what do we want Wollongong to look like in 2050? Do we want to sacrifice arable farming land so that we don't end up with a coastal skyline resembling the Gold Coast? Are centres like Dapto going to turn into cities in their own right? What sort of infrastructure are we going to need to support whatever vision we agree on for a larger Wollongong?

Is Wollongong even going to continue to be the steel city or will we suffer the same fate as Newcastle? 39 years is a long time but we need to start planning for it now.