Children Can't Play Cricket In An Apartment

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday April 11, 2005

I pray that the despised block never comes to an end ("The end of the mythical quarter-acre block", Herald, April 9-10).

Children cannot thrive in an apartment; they read, watch television, play with a computer, or they roam the streets, getting into gangs and/or trouble. Outdoor sport until age 12 is restricted to supervised visits to a parkland; not good for your suntanned Aussie.

You cannot play cricket, ride your bike or tricycle, learn about birds, fowls, dogs, cats or fruit trees in a flat. I did these in a despised backyard on a quarter-acre block before going to secondary school.

We need balanced development for our children, not Martian-like big heads.

J. Davies Pymble

I drive a car and I live in a four-bedroom house on a good-sized block. In the same way Americans won't give up guns, I won't be giving up my way of life to live in a rabbit hutch.

Adele Horin might make the ideal European, but I don't want to live like they do. Most high-density dwellers want to move to a better home as soon as they can. The rich don't live that way because they don't have to, and that is the measure of choice. All Adele Horin is trying to do is make adjusting to necessity sound desirable. It's not.

Michael Stanbridge Bonnet Bay

Adele Horin is right in terms of public transport needing higher densities. She fails to properly acknowledge, however, the loss of visual amenity and the congestion that accompany urban consolidation, and the desire of many parents to raise their children in homes with a backyard. The alternative of urban sprawl is not acceptable either, for many of the reasons she has listed, plus the loss of natural habitat. Thus the only real alternative is an end to population growth. This will not happen overnight as natural increase is with us for decades to come, but we can cut immigration. There may be a skills shortage but look at the skills in short supply: hairdressers, panel beaters, vehicle painters ... Are we so stupid as a nation that we cannot train our own?

Jenny Goldie Michelago

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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