Planning disaster unfolding

Illustration by Katie Scott

In a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on December 2, Jennifer Crone of Bondi described the nightmare of six days a week building happening opposite her apartment.  She is faced with the prospect of 60 trucks a day emitting diesel exhaust fumes and intense noise into her apartment from breakfast to dusk for the anticipated 2 year build.

She noted the extreme stress this will cause particularly to people with very young children, shift workers and the elderly and canvassed the possibility of developers paying for the temporary resettlement of those affected.

I wrote in response that I understood her pain because my own street, Bonnefin Road, has been a building site for the last six years.   But at least it is relatively temporary.

That’s not the case for the people living in all those new apartments that continue to sprout up and down both sides of Sydney’s busiest roads.  All day every day they have to suffer extreme levels of traffic noise and air pollution from the ever increasing numbers of vehicles roaring up and down outside their windows.

Reports commissioned by The NSW Department of Planning, which is responsible for this situation, show that exposure to these levels of pollution and noise is bad for your physical and mental health, impacts on your children’s learning ability and takes years off your life expectancy.

In aiding and abetting the continuation of this planning disaster they are acting like that infamous asbestos denier James Hardie.