Urbanisation in rural areas - Soil Essentials: Managing Your Farm's Primary Asset - page 142

property owners will have to accept that the current concept of home landscaping
may have to be modified to suit harsher soil conditions in future.
In other words, where a landowner has quality agricultural land close to urban
areas, this land should be retained as agricultural, with no possibility of
subdividing it for residential use, and the land should be rated at agricultural rates
and not at urban rate levels. Urban development should be restricted to lower
quality agricultural land.
Defining suitable areas for urbanisation
Guidelines defining suitable areas for urbanisation need to be fully developed at a
national level. The current system of defining land classes on productive potential
would be a useful starting point, but other issues such as proximity to major
transport routes, water and power supply, local climate, land use potential if
modified, and population demands will all have to be considered. The future use
of the land will need to be carefully planned to sustain the population densities
expected in a given area. Also, planning on a national scale is needed to determine
where urban areas should be established and their maximum size should be
considered as a matter of priority. This planning will need fine tuning in the light
of experience and future technological advances in food production.
Overseas planning experience
Unplanned population growth in densely populated areas in other countries has
shown clearly that if environmental issues are not considered, then land
degradation is inevitable, and may be severe. In all cases, this has reduced the
living standards of the inhabitants, and has led to major famines, disease and
starvation.
Globally, if land use plans are not developed urgently, and if the plans are not
implemented, then the extent of land degradation will increase, diminishing the
potential to produce food. In turn, more people will have less to eat. Currently,
there is enough food in the world to feed the world's population, but with ever-
increasing populations, this option will become less and less available.
Concept for Australia
Planning action is suggested along the following lines:
Collate national soil mapping data, including the soil problems of acidification,
sodicity, salinity, erosion and structural decline.
Collate national climatic data.