Ex-Sydneysider STUART PEARSON looks at Bathurst and its future from the perspective of a new resident.
I have a long-term critic: a lovely man whose family runs a large farm along the Sofala road between Laffing Waters and Peel. He believes I favour urban sprawl over preserving productive land. I don't.
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While I do want to see the population of Bathurst and the Central West grow, I don't want it to happen at the expense of one of our most valuable resources - prime agricultural land.
There are two concepts I'd like to raise in this article. The first is a concept of urban development called "Hub and Spoke" and the second concerns preserving prime productive land that lies in between and around urban growth.
Hub and Spoke urban development is the best way to prevent ugly urban sprawl.
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The concept is simple. You start off with the main town or city and then you link them to surrounding separate and smaller locations with good transport so that the people in the smaller villages can easily travel to town without having to move there.
Hub and Spoke development creates beneficial "green spaces" between the town and the villages and prevents houses from simply spreading out in all directions from the town.
It also encourages growth in the smaller villages. Why live in an expensive, crowded town when you can enjoy a much more affordable and pleasant life in a semi-rural village a short and safe trip away?
The land in between and surrounding the towns and villages should be permanently protected by zoning for farmland, forests, wetlands, parks and water catchment areas.
Preserving prime agricultural land is the main reason for introducing green space legislation, but it is not the only reason.
In essence, the green spaces become a permanent border around a certain location, preventing future urban development and allowing the land to remain more natural, more productive and more beneficial to the overall health of the environment.
Farmland, forests and the natural assets in these green spaces contribute billions of dollars in revenue to local economies each year from a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, meat, grains, award-winning wines and eco-tourism.
Examples of this type of planning exist all around the world. In Canada, the Agricultural Land Reserve has preserved almost 50,000 square kilometres of productive and natural land in the province of British Columbia. This is almost the same size as the entire Central West of NSW.
There are green spaces preserved around London and other cities throughout Europe. Colonel William Light encircled Adelaide in a wide green belt, making it one of the most attractive cities in the world.
Today, towns and cities across the world as well as Australia are at a crossroad. If we go down one path of urban planning, we will continue a low-density, creeping urban expansion into the countryside.
We all know where this well-worn route takes us - concrete and bitumen for as far as the eye can see; long commutes and traffic jams; not to mention the high social and ecological costs associated with such a wasteful form of urban design.
But if we go down another path, we can have vibrant, growing villages connected to successful regional cities with the valuable land in between being preserved permanently for agriculture, forestry, water catchment and parklands.
This is the direction I'd want to follow.
Finally, to my farmer critic along the Sofala road, I'm not your enemy. I'm actually your friend.
