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Map: Your suggestions for where to put a new city

Paul Colgan

by Paul Colgan

20 Apr 05:50am

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Filed under: Big Australia, Infrastructure, Maps, Population

62 comments

As Tory wrote yesterday The Punch conducted a survey on attitudes to population growth last week. One question we asked was what people thought of the idea of building a new city, and 70 per cent said yes. So given there’s probably broad support for building a new city, the next question is: where should it be? There are some suggestions in already but we’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments - some of the initial suggestions are in this map and we’ll add to it as your ideas come in.


View Location for a new Australian city? in a larger map

Have a click around the map: zoom in and check out the various icons - there’s a little summary with each location and why they might work - or you can see a full-size version of the map here. But be bold and make your own suggestions in the comments below and we’ll keep building the map out.

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Most commented

62 comments

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    • BTS says:

      05:55am | 20/04/10

      Queenstown:

      We need another ski resort and we already provide air support in times of war.

      Reply

    • Hay, NSW townie says:

      06:24am | 20/04/10

      Stuff building another city, fix and repopulate our existing rural towns. Here is an idea its sustainable and it would cost little Wagga +40000 Narrandera +10000 Hay +7000 Balranald +2000 Robinvale/Euston +14000 Mildura +30000 Renmark +5000 Berri +15000…just give industry some tax breaks and incentives to move there and offer zone rebates to people earning over $30000

      These places already have under utilized exsisting infrastructure and will not require major road and local transport spending as the urban sprawl will not be very big, in fact they will still most likely be small enough to get around on a pushbike.

      And the same principal can be rolled out among strings of country towns across Australia

      Reply

    • DougB says:

      06:57am | 20/04/10

      I think one of the obvious ones is missing.

      Kununurra, would be a good place. 
      You have the water supply in the Ord and Victoria River areas to supply the cities.  It would create jobs, especially if you were to develop a supporting town out from Wyndham where a deep water port could be built.
      This in turn starts to provide support to Oil, Gas and Mining regions as well as the potential of the Massive agriculture schemes that could be run up there.
      It opens up the remote NW.
      It offers opportunity.

      Reply

    • neil says:

      12:30pm | 20/04/10

      Spot on DougB.
      I have been to Kununurra many times and it is the perfect place for a city of a million plus people. As you said Wyndham is a perfect natural harbour. Lake Argyle holds 10 time as much water as Sydney harbour 10,763,000 ML more than 5 times the storage capacioty of Melbourne or Sydney,  there is so much rain it filled in just 3 years.

      There is 44,000 hectares of irrigateable land so fertile you could feed half of Asia from it, the total fertile basin covers over 40,000 sq km. All that and only 4000 people live there!

      The Kimberly is the most under utilised resource in the country, probably the world!

    • Andrew says:

      07:16am | 20/04/10

      How about Emerald or Gladstone Area. Plenty of good paying jobs, plenty of infrastructure to build so jobs for life, plenty of land available so no land problems.

      Western Qld, Plenty of good paying jobs, plenty of infrastructure to build so jobs for life, plenty of land available so no land problems.

      Reply

    • Jeff from Meroo says:

      07:20am | 20/04/10

      I reckon a city right somewhere in the Nullarbor National Park, along the coast.  It’d have nice weather, surrounded by a National Park and one hell of a truck stop between Adelaide and Perth.

      Reply

    • aj says:

      07:31am | 20/04/10

      I would be building it in N.T and tapping into the huge underground water supplies.

      Reply

    • Agblaster says:

      07:43am | 20/04/10

      Very funny. Where’s Darwin? 130,000 people and growing fast.

      Reply

    • All says:

      07:44am | 20/04/10

      NW Westen Australia, plenty of water, irrigable famland, mining industries, space to move and expand, perfect for decentralisation. Helps to reduce the East Coast centric nature of Australia.

      Reply

    • Pete says:

      07:51am | 20/04/10

      How we won’t DON’T build a city Paul?

      Why are are you railroading us into this this build packed-like-sardines cities agenda?

      Reply

    • Hay NSW townie says:

      08:44am | 20/04/10

      At the end of the day if people are immigrating to Australia so they can live near a big shopping center in a city they are coming for all the wrong reasons….I vote the very central river town Hay.

      I think get businesses out to Australias existing towns which in most cases could handle more people is a better solution than building another metropolitan mess.

      Other than being a great place for shopping centers cities only consume and recycle..citys produce no primary products every thing needs to be shipped into them. Smaller population centers in existing rural towns with existing would require little capital spending to handle a population increase.

      Two simple steps would help make it happen tax breaks and incentives for companies to set up in rural communities and a zone tax rebate for people earning above $30000 when they move to the rural community. Perhaps if we do get companies out in these regions priority immigration entry to low skilled workers could be considered possibly with an agreement of relocating to those rural communities.

      Australia can increase it’s population and revitalise it’s rural communities if it does this right and politicians look beyond getting short term votes.

      Reply

    • Linda says:

      08:54am | 20/04/10

      Townsville is already a sprawling city, although it’s name would lead you to believe otherwise. And it’s far too hot to live there, anyone who says they like the heat should spend some time there. It’s oppressive uncomfortable and draining. Airconditioning needs to run almost 24 hrs a day 365 days of the year and It’s dry and arid.

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      09:02am | 20/04/10

      We should invade New Zealand. Lebensraum. It’s our birth right.

      Reply

    • John A Neve says:

      09:21am | 20/04/10

      Zeta,
      I think you are right, over the last few years we have invaded just about every other small country. After all New Zealand makes good wine.

    • Andrew says:

      10:03am | 20/04/10

      Then instead of paying the dole to 1/2 of NZ we’d have to pay it to all of them! On the other hand we’d have a killer rugby team.

    • Matt says:

      10:28am | 20/04/10

      absolutely right. half of them are already hanging around Bondi anyway

    • julia says:

      10:35am | 20/04/10

      I’d sooner go south to the Antarctic.

    • agblaster says:

      02:05pm | 20/04/10

      Invade Un Zud eh.

      Half a tick. Will that be before the Soviets invade us, or after?

      You really oughta start taking the pills again, Zeta.

    • TracyS says:

      04:00pm | 23/04/10

      @Shifter - too funny!

    • Russell says:

      09:05am | 20/04/10

      Let people live where they want, you can’t force anyone anywhere unless you adopt a Soviet model of economic growth.

      Any suggestion anywhere will just provoke a Nimby backlash. The more desirable the location (eg. NSW North Coast), the stronger the backlash. Seats will be lost, the plans will be dropped.

      There is nothing wrong with big cities. Sydney, Melbourne, 8 to 12 million. Why not? Please don’t tell me “we can’t do it because we’re Australians and we keep voting for hopeless State governments.” That’s just too damn depressing…

      Reply

    • Paris says:

      09:22am | 20/04/10

      Weird that nobody has added anywhere in New Zealand…

      Reply

    • Julia says:

      10:29am | 20/04/10

      I don’t think that’s weird at all.

    • Scott Glennon says:

      09:22am | 20/04/10

      We should start cloning ourselves in international waters, have ourselves build shonky boats, land in Christmas Island, be slaved to develop the Western Coastline and have each reproduce twice in their lifetime, so we can steal their spawn and raise our clones offpsring to our own liking.
      Who needs immigration when we are already perfect?

      Reply

    • Samson says:

      02:38pm | 20/04/10

      Finally, some sensible ideas!

    • tyu says:

      09:47am | 20/04/10

      How come small countries with zero population growth and very few immigrants like Norway, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, etc. have a higher standard of living and a stronger economy than Australia? But our politicians and business people say it’s critical to grow our population through mass immigration to increase our standard of living. Something is not right here. A true journalist would try to find out who’ll get rich off population growth, because the evidence is clear that the average Aussie won’t gain a thing but will lose a lot.

      Reply

    • agblaster says:

      04:19pm | 20/04/10

      Uh, no, that’s not right. NZ does not have a higher standard of living or a stronger economy.

      Who told you that? Did you bother to check?

    • Tex says:

      09:50am | 20/04/10

      Weird how everyone reckons there is all this potential and infrastructure in rural towns. Look at the youth unemployment figures and some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Great idea city people!

      Reply

    • Skip says:

      10:15am | 20/04/10

      I agree with Hay - why not invest in the improvement of our existing cities and rural areas instead of blowing our budget on building a new one (that they’ll eventually screw up as well)?

      Reply

    • Benson says:

      10:19am | 20/04/10

      Why not Newcastle and Wollongong? Why not Mildura or Albury? (Sorry NT, QLD, TAS & WA i don’t know the equivalent cities in your states). Instead of creating an entirely new city why not ensure that our satellite towns that are between major cities become cities in themselves? That would justify high speed railways and major improvements to the existing highway network. On top of extending major telecommunications like fibre optics. In times of emergency it will also ensure that responses can be shared between the cities. Food and other supplies will not need to be majorly redistributed, as they already pass through these towns.

      Reply

    • Steve B says:

      10:21am | 20/04/10

      Rather than just fill in the gaps between Brisbane - Sydney - Canberra - Melbourne corridor, I think this corridor could be extended further west. Places like Warnambool and Mt Gambier come to mind. Also the Mildura - Wentworth area and Renmark- Berri - Loxton in SA. Murray Bridge already has good road and rail links and would make a great candidate for expansion.

      Reply

    • Francis says:

      11:05am | 20/04/10

      What about re-establishing the national capital somewhere a bit nicer? Crash in on Forster or somewhere along the NSW mid-north coast, and make the home of government a better place to live. If we’re going to emasculate the states and centralise everything in the federal government, we may as well put it somewhere that competent people want to live, rather than just sneakily moving cabinet meetings (on Phillip St) and federal agencies (ASIC, AFP, etc) to Sydney all the time anyway. And as a bonus, it means you instantly get a new popular city! As people have said, a NSW north coast location means better telecoms and rail links along the corridor. Sure it would be good to open up the middle of the country, but we’ve still got plenty of nice coastline too. And moving the national capital would be the easiest way to really give a city a reason to exist, rather than trying to set up wild west frontier towns in the Pilbara or something.

      I’ve written about this a bit more here http://wp.me/pIBUd-3S

      Sorry Canberra. You can still be a stop on the Sydney-Melbourne train line though.

      Reply

    • JennyF says:

      08:18am | 23/04/10

      I was surprised when visiting Canberra recently, that if I wanted to get on the Melbourne -Sydney train I had to go to Yass Junction.

    • Ben says:

      11:29am | 20/04/10

      How about instead of creating new cities we expand existing ones? Take my state, SA, for example; it would be possible to expand towns like Port Lincoln, Port Pirie, Mount Gambier, Naracoorte…make them cities of 20-30,000 people.

      Reply

    • Sick of travel says:

      11:44am | 20/04/10

      I would suggest providing incentive for businesses to move to places like Joondalup in WA. Really build up so that we have proper office blocks in these locations. It is a minor citiy in it’s own right but most companies in Perth have their head office in the city.

      If you did the same thing for Rockingham or Mandurah in the South, it would encourage people to work in these area’s and reduce the throughput of people in the city, freeways, public transport etc.

      People are living further and further away from the city centre as it is, so this will give them an opportunity for employment closer to home.

      I am sure this same story could be said for every state in Australia ... utilise existing small cities on the outskirts of the CBD and move more businesses there.

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      10:16pm | 23/04/10

      Good suggestion. Amazingly it appears the federal govt is planning to headquarter the vast NBN Co with its thousands of employees in Melbourne, one of our most overcrowded cities. No thought it all. Why not a regional centre like Albury, Toowoomba, Albany or Canberra?

    • Iron Chef says:

      11:49am | 20/04/10

      Obviously this new mega city should be located at Iron Knob, South Australia.  The location is centralised, there is vast amounts of land available, and it will be a hub for the coming mining boom. Further the name is elegant and rolls off the tongue so nicely.  It will soon be one of the truly great world cities; New York, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Iron Knob.

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      10:21pm | 23/04/10

      I think it should be at Yorkey’s Knob just outside of Cairns. Great beach and abundant resources in the form of sugar cane which can be made into the staples of molasses and rum.

    • stephen says:

      11:49am | 20/04/10

      Our exports to Sth. East Asia, and there should be lots of them, should leave from deep-water ports in Darwin. Freight and goods from Melb. and Syd. should be railed up to Darwin through, say, Bathurst or Dubbo, and thats were our City should be.
      For Cultural reasons, the new city should be inland.

      Reply

    • Julie Coker-Godson says:

      12:02pm | 20/04/10

      You said be bold so I’m going to be audacious:  how about Lightning Ridge where people live underground.  I’ve always wanted to live underground - I’ve seen some of the pictures of hotels and the like and I think it could work, especially in the hotter places of Australia, provided of course that the ground is suitable for underground “caving”.  There is mining out there and I believe there is some infrastructure out there to provide for e.g. tourists at least as well as the miners.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      12:17pm | 20/04/10

      You’re a bit late. I think a couple of people responding to Bronwyn’s ‘peg’ already live in a cave.

    • Daniel P says:

      12:20pm | 20/04/10

      The simple thing would be for the WA state govt to open up land supply in Karratha, Port Hedland and Broome. Remove the loony restrictions on where people can build a house and those towns will boom.

      Townsville and other north QLD cities are already booming but again if the mentally unstable QLD govt removed stupid planning & building restrictions on those regional cities the increase in supply and reduction in cost of land and development would immediately attract a larger population boom.

      Same goes for Ballarat, Bendigo or Geelong in Victoria. Stupid restrictive land rules prevent the massive urban development that is eminently possible.

      That is the only thing that needs to happen to give these regional cities a competitive advantage over the capital cities.

      Reply

    • Shifter says:

      12:44pm | 20/04/10

      I wouldn’t say the only thing. Another problem is people need to earn a living in some way, shape or form. Smaller country cities are limited in that they often don’t have the labouring jobs that small mining towns provide, and they don’t have the professional jobs that are generally situated in the capital cities. That, and most jobs still requier you to report to an office/site for the daily 9 to 5.

      People tend to go where the betters jobs are, and if there was an initiative for businesses to invest away from the current cities you might see people migrate.

      Not to derail the topic, but part of the reason businesses don’t move is the appalling standard of communications away from the big cities.

    • Gordon Akman says:

      12:37pm | 20/04/10

      I think satellite cities are the way to go. You can see how smaller cities benefit from their proximity to major cities. There are several cities in Australia 1-2hrs from major cities that are growing nicely and attracting people who are happy to live there. Trying to force people to move to woop woop is so stupid it beggars belief. Instead of looking for new ways to flush our money down the toilet let’s focus on developing parts of the country where people actually want to live.

      Reply

    • country shep says:

      06:12pm | 20/04/10

      Spoken like someone who has never been more than 1 - 2 hours from a major city.  Small minds give smal-minded solutions

    • Peter says:

      03:17pm | 20/04/10

      I think its time Australia had a large inland city.. All our big cities are on the coast…

      Reply

    • Gordon Akman says:

      04:24pm | 20/04/10

      Yeah smart thinking, Peter. Hey maybe you could use your money to build one and see if anyone wants to go and live there with you lol

    • Temerarious says:

      03:48pm | 20/04/10

      It’s so jaw-droppingly obvious, it’s not even funny. Build a high-speed TGV style train link from Sydney to Melbourne, via Campbelltown, the Southern Highlands, Goulburn, Canberra, Wagga, Albury, Wangaratta and Shepparton. Not only could each of those regional centres handle the resulting investment, development and tens of thousands more residents easily, but you would be able to travel between each centre in minutes instead of hours!?!

      Besides, who the hell wants to live in Sydney with its pollution, congestion and nasty people when you could live somewhere like Wagga that has fresh air, short drives and friendly folk?

      Time for some real nation building!

      Reply

    • JennyF says:

      05:41am | 23/04/10

      VFT’S (Very fast Trains) are the answer. Melbourne to Sydney in 3 hours and all very possible and don’t think it hasn’t been put forward, but when will we ever get the right people in Government to achieve things. We need more power stations and dams to move people out but they are not forthcoming. We need an army base near Broome and the building of this would create employment.

    • James says:

      04:30pm | 20/04/10

      How about the Tanamai desert it is the size of Britain! Don’t worry about water we will truck it in.  Hey come to think of it, I don’t see the moon being fully utilised either.

      Reply

    • Judy says:

      05:32pm | 20/04/10

      Apparently our little town’s population is supposed to increase to 20000 from the current 2000 according to regional and state bueaucrats and the locals have no idea why…so I would like to suggest Gayndah in the Central Burnett Area of Queensland has already been earmarked to be a new city!!

      Reply

    • Daz says:

      05:42pm | 20/04/10

      Develop Bajool, between Rockhampton and Gladstone in Queensland.  Very close to a deep water port, abundant water supply through piping via the Fitzroy, and required for accommodation for workers required in the Gladstone industrial precinct.  And most of all it’s flat with lots of cleared former cattle farming land.  9 LNG refineries, 3 coal terminals and 2 alumina refineries need workers.

      Alternatively, Cardwell, coastal community near Mackay, able to open up a rail corridor to the inner Qld coal mines for easier offshore loading.

      Reply

    • Nigel Catchlove says:

      07:28pm | 20/04/10

      Good idea, but there are two - not nine - LNG processing plants in Australia, the North West Shelf LNG Project in Western Australia and the Darwin LNG plant.  A third is proposed for Gladstone and it will be the first in the world to liquefy coal-seam gas for export.

    • acker says:

      04:37pm | 21/04/10

      Rockhampton (60K) and Gladstone (20K) are only 100 km’s apart, do they need a big joint in between them ? If changed their cropping practices from open furrow irrigated cotton, Emerald would be a good spot for population growth IMHO.

    • KM says:

      06:59pm | 20/04/10

      Christmas island sounds like a good spot!

      Reply

    • Joel Schubert says:

      08:09pm | 20/04/10

      Central West would be the best option seeing that Australia’s future relies on our population moving inland in order to release the pressure off our coastal cities. The Central West did and still has potential to take off and prosper with proper connectivity between other regional towns to ensure that trade amongst our primary industries can continue.

      Reply

    • Shifter says:

      03:21pm | 21/04/10

      Kalgoorlie??

    • acker says:

      09:02am | 21/04/10

      As Juan Antonio Samaranch once said (by the way all the best Juan hope you get over the illness).......The Winner Is ...............Hay >>>>> smile

      Reply

    • Pete2 says:

      10:02am | 21/04/10

      The Bush sounds like wishful thinking, and how many of those hard core Anglo country towns are going to want a rapid influx of migrants - get real city folks…

      Let’s see Rudd’s and Abbott’s plan for building affordable housing in the next 10 years,  before we talk about a total trainwreck of our cities and this wishful thinking of ramming upteen millon people into Australia…

      We need an evidence based approach that Rudd or Abbott can handle the current population and infrastructure before you big populaton dreamers get to carried away or distracted with convenient Labor Propaganda.

      Yeah send the population to New Zealand and just have a satellite Aussie city in NZ or in the Pacific nations.

      Reply

    • acker says:

      12:11pm | 21/04/10

      @Pete2 ..if populating “bush” where all the resources is wishful thinking…then the city’s that to rely on those products to manufacture/export will collapse. If you don’t eat - you don’t poop-if you don’t poop your probably dead.

      No exports = No money to buy imports = No shopping centers wink

    • Stuart says:

      04:00pm | 22/04/10

      We can’t simply “build” a city somewhere. Our next population boom needs to be supported by major infrastructure projects not only to provide employment during construction, but to link growing regional centres to capital cities. I suggest we go ahead with an international airport in Goulburn to be supported by a very fast train link between Sydney and Canberra (via Goulburn). That train could then be further developed from Canberra to Melbourne via Wagga Wagga and Albury. You would then have Goulburn, Wagga Wagga and Albury as major regional growth centres - all accessible quickly from Sydney and Melbourne.

      Reply

    • Just Sayin' says:

      06:42pm | 22/04/10

      I think we should put a brand new city around Sydney harbour.

      Reply
 
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