“Qarth is the greatest city that ever was or will be.” – The Thirteen, Game of Thrones.
I used to get angry at Australia for not being a bigger, more modern country. Australia, like the United States, has had the benefit of being a new country free of what former US President James Monroe referred to as “European Entanglements”. It is a vast land unified under a common culture and language. Although the United States enjoys these advantages, unlike the United States, Australia benefits from geographic isolation making it extremely difficult to illegally enter the country. It is national news when a refugee boat of 160 would be immigrants are caught trying to sneak in. To put it in perspective, there are more illegal aliens in the United States than there are Australians in Australia. For all of its natural beauty, strong borders, and resources; Australia is still a tiny country by population and yet there is a constant paranoia of becoming “too crowded” or “running out of land”.
No offense to the people of Alaska and Hawaii (although your states are beautiful, your populations are negligible), but the United States and Australia are roughly equal in size if you compare the continental US to Oz, yet the US has over fourteen times the population. I have never once heard an American declare that they were worried about running out of land and there are still vast open spaces that are largely untouched in the United States. New York City is our largest city. It is a city of steel and skyscrapers, subways, and the highest population density in the US. Yet, a few hours’ drive away, in upstate New York, are farmlands and rural towns. There is still plenty of room for growth even near the metropolis that is New York.
When I point this out, I often hear that most of the land in Australia is the Outback and is uninhabitable. To which I always say bullshit as I grew up in an environment far hotter and more inhospitable than the Outback. My home town, Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the hottest cities in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona). The summer time temperatures are more severe than anything found in the Australian desert. Additionally, there is a newish invention called “air conditioning” that makes living in extreme heat at least somewhat possible.
However, even if one were to forget the Outback is unlivable argument, there is plenty of beautiful land on the coast that is sparsely populated. The city of Geelong with a population of well over 100,000 people is only a scant 47 miles from Melbourne and yet, most act as if it were on the other side of the moon. Meanwhile, in California, there are people that live in Orange County and work in Los Angeles and vise versa. It is roughly the same distance away. The fact that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING between Altona (a suburb near Melbourne) and Geelong says to me, that there is plenty of room to grow.
The United States created the playbook for populating an uninhabited continent (sorry Native Americans). First, accept a gift from France and engrave this at the base (whatever happened to countries giving each other gifts anyway?):
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Open the floodgates to immigration and offer new immigrants land under the Homestead Act. Encourage people to move away from the Eastern seaboard and watch as cities the size of Melbourne spring out of nowhere. Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Saint Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and more were built by wagon trains of settlers looking for a better life. Many towns were founded and later abandoned, but all of the cities mentioned above have populations over a million people and have achieved a critical, sustainable mass.
Meanwhile, in Australia, there are only four cities with a population of at least a million. With a birth rate less than the replacement rate and mixed feelings on immigration, it is difficult to see how new cities will be created or where future growth will come from. Even so, there is constant worry about planning for Melbourne’s future and ensuring there is infrastructure available in the next twenty years. I physically had to get up and leave a table during a speech talking about ensuring Melbourne stays livable in the year 2030 and how would an extra million people be capable of living here. I resisted the urge to yell, “Stop trying to plan everything and let the fucking city grow!” That has been the American model.
However, after watching twenty hours of “Game of Thrones” over a three week period, I started to think a lot about Qarth. Described as “the greatest city that ever was or will be” I kept on trying to think of a city I have seen that could possibly live up to such lofty expectations.
Some of my best memories in my life came from the period of time in which I lived in Los Angeles, California. Yet, if I plucked a few Melbournians off the street, brought them to LA, and told them that this was the future of Melbourne; I think they would take one look and then kill themselves. The only thing truly great about Los Angeles was endowed by nature. The beaches, the perfect weather, and the soil existed long before the Spanish, the Mexicans, and eventually the Americans turned the city into the cesspool that it is today.
As far as infrastructure, there isn’t any. The traffic is unbearable, crime is a constant issue, and the public education system is amongst the worst in the nation. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the earth, on a Saturday night, Julie and the kids were out of town. I wandered drunkenly from Ethihad Stadium after an AFL game to the Crown Casino. Suddenly, I got it. I understood exactly what Australians are trying to preserve. It dawned on me that even though I did not have my young children with me, I could have.
My children like going to the footy and I like to take them. It is family friendly and I have never, not even for a second, worried about their safety. We could go to the game and get there and back cheaply and easily using public transportation. It occurred to me that I would never want to take my kids to a Dodgers game in LA. The traffic and parking would be horrible. Even worse, I would worry about gang bangers and it is impossible to walk anywhere.
Recently, Melbourne won the award for the “most livable city” for the second year in a row. I used to make snarky comments that it was the most livable city for anyone who made over a million dollars a year, but for those who bought homes twenty years ago, it is a fantastic city. Melbourne may not be the greatest city that ever was or will be, as I predict the immediate future will be disastrous. However, in this exact moment in time, it is a pretty spectacular city that has so much to offer in culture, activities, transportation, and education.
