Uploaded on 2017-06-08 by Greg McPherson

Ideas are a flow. I'm personally passionate about the urban built environment. My photo shows an old idea that needs replacing. The idea that street signage applies only to a motorist. The information is exactly wrong for other road uses as this street is exactly a through road and exactly the best way to go if you're not in a car. The three most important stocks and flows in Wollongong are talented people. Young people enter the area by virtue of birth or moving here with their family. Sometimes they stay to go to University. Once educated and of some value they leave. Wollongong is said to have the highest house prices in the world, as a ratio of average household income. Houses cost over ten times average annual household income. The reason houses are expensive is because of the geographic closeness of Sydney. The reason incomes are so low is because Wollongong, like Detroit is struggling to reinvent itself after the collapse of its manufacturing sector and its complete lack of willingness to be innovative or take risk. There are too many stocks [static things] and not enough flows [dynamic things]. Even our trains are almost static things, given our very fastest express trains to Sydney (80kms away) achieve average speeds of less than 55kms/hr! Wollongong needs to "Copenhagenize" - http://www.copenhagenize.com/ where ideas can flow. Car dependency by design kills all places where it exists. This attribute is a city of the past, not a "future city"!