VICTORIA'S chronic urbanisation is costing agriculture and taxpayers dearly, argues BRIAN CLANCY

Australia is over-urbanised and we are paying dearly because of it.

And we are not talking here about Baz Luhrmann's Australia, starring, ironically, Mrs Keith Urban.

Although if you believe the marketing and tourism hype hanging off this film, Australia is a land of sweeping colourful plains rather than road-blocked thirsty cities.

Sixty-four per cent of Australia's population of 21.5 million lives in the capital cities, including Darwin and Canberra.

In Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia about 3 in every four people live in their respective capital cities.

NSW has a lower rate of 64 per cent, while Queensland and Tasmania have the lowest rates with four in 10 living in Brisbane and Hobart.

These urbanisation rates are more than double that of the US.

Melbourne, with a population of 3.8 million and growth rate of 1.65 per cent, is being hit hardest by this high urbanisation rate.

No surprises that Premier John Brumby earlier this month had to unveil a $38 billion plan to fix traffic problems. That's $38 billion - no not $3.8 billion but $38,000,000,000 - or $10,000 for every current resident of Melbourne.

History will show that at best, the works scheduled for the next six years will provide only a Band-Aid treatment and the problems will be compounded as we scramble to find more "affordable" space to build "affordable" houses on the outskirts of Melbourne to accommodate more people to add more pressures to over-utilised water and transport infrastructure.

It's a bit like fixing up an old rusty pipe. Fix up one leak and it creates pressure for another leak.

The US mightn't be everyone's cup of tea, but when it comes to decentralisation it is miles ahead of Australia.

The United States has a population of about 300 million. So, how many cities does the US have with more than a million people? Fifty? No. Twenty? No. There are only nine.

Its largest city is New York with 8.4 million, followed next by Los Angeles at 3.8 million equal to Melbourne and well short of Sydney's 4.3 million.

Typical of the US decentralisation is the northern state Minnesota.

Minnesota is very much like Victoria.

Both have a population of 5.2 million and are of similar size in area.

Both have strong economies built from cropping, livestock, dairying, manufactures and tourism.

But that's where the similarities end.

Minnesota's gross domestic product is twice Victoria's 2007 estimate of $267 billion.

But more importantly Minnesota operates around a myriad of small cities. It has 20 cities with more than 50,000 and yet its major metropolis - the twin cities of St Pauls and Minneapolis, home to two of the world's most successful companies Cargill and 3M - has only 600,000 people.

Victoria on the other hand has Melbourne with 3.8 million and only three comparable cities - Geelong (170,000), Ballarat (89,700) and Bendigo (86,000).

Unfortunately for Victoria and both its urban and rural taxpayers the problems of urbanisation will never be solved.

There are too many voters now in Melbourne who demand of their governments - whether they be Labor or Liberal that such problems as road congestion, lack of water and inefficient public transport - be "fixed".

Country people can jump up and down as much as they like. The politics will dictate Melbourne will get as much water as it wants from the country as well as the tax-payer dollar.

Logic might suggest governments might check urbanisation by restricting new home grants to regional towns and cities as well as cutting pay roll taxes.

Unfortunately politics is too short-term for long-term thinking.

  • Brian Clancy is a senior Weekly Times reporter. He lives at Kilmore, once a farming town and now being caught up in Melbourne's sprawl.