If you want to see rents come down, stop penalizing homebuilding. Or did you think housing was immune to market forces?

As for the article, it's probably just me, but see an article by a whiny leftist, tucked away in some university commie preserve, complaining mostly about "scatological design," those horrible, horrible personal automobiles, and "private financing!!!" God help us!

I went to architecture school with people like this years ago, who firmly believed that Better and Wiser People should be designing "spaces" for the lesser folks to live in (they were always called "spaces.") Most designs resembled ant warrens, designed for Socialist Man, not the evil White Suburbanite. There was little or no private property outside the walls of your "space." Clivus toilets were invoked, and worse.

These people reserved their worst contempt for "suburbia," with its lawns, individual homes, and open space that belonged to individuals, not the collective. The fact that people really wanted to live there just showed they didn't know what was good for them.

These designers sometimes got massive grants and other support to build their "New Towns," which usually ended up going broke, or evolving quite nicely when left alone into "old towns."

In brief, most of this article just reflectsthe opinions of someone who has a feather up his ass about private personal transportation and homes.

BTW, has anyone actually looked into the Sydney pollution situation? How does it compare to other major cities? Has it been improving, or getting worse over the past twenty years?