如果澳大利亚在未来几十年人口达到4000万，正如代际报告所预测的那样，充足的住房将至关重要。
If Australia is to have a population of 40 million in a few decades, as the intergenerational report predicts, adequate housing will be crucial.
在世界上最富有的国家之一，住房体系已然失灵，住房不安全现象普遍存在。仅在新南威尔士州，过去三年公共住房和社区住房数量就减少了4530套。
Already the system is failing, housing insecurity is rife in one of the richest countries on the planet. The number of public and community houses in New South Wales alone fell by 4,530 over the past three years.
《国家城市政策》中关于可持续、包容性增长、住房负担能力和环境保护的空洞承诺，无法替代当前迫切需要的行动，随着人工智能重塑经济，这种需求将更加迫切。
The platitudes of the National Urban Policy, promising sustainable, inclusive growth, affordability and environmental protection, are a poor placeholder for what is needed now, and more so as the economy is restructured by artificial intelligence.
住房危机多年来一直主导着公共讨论——“负担能力”成了热词，到2030年新建120万套住房成为目标。
The housing crisis has dominated public discussion for years – affordability is the buzzword and 1.2m new dwellings by 2030 the target.
作为回应，新南威尔士州政府去年提出提案，允许在悉尼东部伍拉拉的一个新火车站周边建设六至八层的公寓楼。随着其其他大型住房项目相继失败，政府对伍拉拉项目大幅升级：该郊区人口预计将增长三分之一以上。
In response the NSW government last year developed a proposal to allow six- and eight-storey apartment buildings to be constructed around a new railway station at Woollahra in Sydney’s east. As its other mega housing projects collapsed, it put Woollahra on steroids: the suburb’s population should grow by a more than a third.
这可能导致私人开发商收购并拆除多达151栋遗产建筑和无数树木，在这座澳大利亚最初的花园郊区之一，建设142座高楼、共9400套新公寓，部分高达30层，尽管新南威尔士州规划部长期规定要求“保留并将当地遗产项目融入周边区域”。政府将提供重新分区和一个火车站，但不建新学校或公园。
It could lead to private developers acquiring and demolishing up to 151 heritage buildings and countless trees, in one of Australia’s original garden suburbs, and build 9,400 new apartments in 142 towers, some up to 30-stories high, despite the longstanding NSW Department of Planning mandate for the “retention and integration of local heritage items into the surrounding areas”. The government will contribute rezoning, a railway station, but no new schools or parks.
上周末我亲身体会到了这一点，得知我居住的这栋普通装饰派建筑被指定改建为9层高楼。
This came home to me last weekend, when I discovered that my modest art deco building was designated to become a 9-storey tower.
伍拉拉的魅力部分在于它体现了城镇规划师过去追求的理想——“混合社区”配合良好的公共交通。无论在建筑风格还是居民构成上，它都是混合的。
Part of the charm of Woollahra is that it embodies what town planners used to aspire to, “mixed neighbourhoods” with good public transport. It is mixed in terms of architecture and people.
我的这栋1930年代建筑拥有城区（而非海港）景观；公寓售价约100万澳元，在虚高的悉尼房市中算是相对负担得起。楼里住着一些乐于爬楼梯锻炼的老太太、孩子就读优质当地公立学校的单亲父母，还有从事普通工作的年轻人。
My 1930s building has district (not harbour) views; its apartments sell for around $1m, making them relatively affordable in the inflated Sydney market. It is home to old ladies who happily keep fit by walking up the stairs, single parents whose children go to the excellent local (public) school, and young people with ordinary jobs.
街道两旁矗立着数栋三层红砖公寓楼、七栋联邦风格住宅、十栋排屋、两栋价值连城的豪宅、一家养老院及公寓楼、一栋被改建成公寓的大宅，还有一栋藏身于参天大树后的破败19世纪豪宅。
The street includes several 3-storey red-brick flats, seven federation houses, 10 terraces, two squillion dollar mansions, an old folk’s home and apartments, a big house subdivided into flats and a run-down 19th century mansion that hides behind enormous trees.
如今，它们全都被邦迪交汇点一座不断增高的新豪华开发项目俯瞰，该项目因包含几套“保障性”公寓而获准不断加高。
They are now all overlooked by a new luxury development in Bondi Junction that keeps getting taller thanks to the inclusion of a few “affordable” apartments.
州政府的规划将把三层红砖楼改建为九层高塔，拆除五栋联邦风格住宅并替换为十二层高塔，两侧各保留几处遗产建筑作点缀。这些新建住宅没有任何一套会是“负担得起的”。
The state government’s plan will transform the three-storey red brick buildings into nine-storey towers, demolish five federation houses and replace them with 12-storey towers, bookended by a couple of heritage properties. There will be nothing “affordable” about any of them.
开发商的老经验法则——三分之一土地成本、三分之一建设成本、三分之一利润——意味着一套“保障性”公寓将售价300万澳元，远超我楼里住户的承受能力。
The old developers’ rule of thumb: one-third land costs, one-third construction and one-third profit, means an “affordable” apartment will cost $3m, well beyond the means of the people in my building.
悉尼、墨尔本和布里斯班到处都在拆除遗产建筑；正如迈克尔·勒尼格所称，那些“糟糕化者”“践踏公共场所和心爱之物”。
Heritage is being demolished all over Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; as those Michael Leunig called the awfullisers “trash public places and favourite things”.
我们需要建设更多真正负担得起的住房，但必须明智行事，不破坏社会肌理。关键在于把比例搭配得当。
There is a need to build more genuinely affordable dwellings, but to do it wisely without destroying the social fabric. Getting the mix right is key.
曾经强大的公共住房委员会大规模建设住房。因建造住宅数量庞大，他们雇佣并培训了大批学徒。他们具备小建筑商无法比拟的创新规模优势。通过采购能力、利用公有土地以及去除利润需求，成本得以压低。
Robust public housing commissions once built homes at scale. Because of the large number of dwellings they constructed they employed and trained scores of apprentices. They had the scale to innovate, the way that small builders cannot. Costs were kept down by purchasing power, using publicly owned land and removing the need for profit.
1995年，联邦政府不再拨款给各州建设公共住房，转而提供租房补贴，导致建设量骤降。战后大多数年份里，公共住房约占新增住宅的20%，如今这一比例不足2%。
When the federal government in 1995 moved away from giving the states money to build public housing and switched instead to rental support, construction plummeted. For most of the postwar years public housing accounted for about 20% of new dwellings, now it is less than 2%.
当时的初衷是让“租房贫困群体”拥有比管理不善的州住房委员会住房更多的选择。批评者持怀疑态度，预言州住房机构会放弃建设，而昂贵的纳税人补贴将更多地惠及开发商而非租户。
The aim at the time was to give “the rental poor” more choice than inadequately managed state housing commission homes. Critics were sceptical, predicting state housing agencies would give up and expensive taxpayer subsidies would help developers more than tenants.
结果正如所料。我们如今陷入住房危机，缺乏有意义的城市政策，建筑业也岌岌可危。这是几十年来在开发商和银行家推动下做出的政治决策的产物。
And so it came to pass. We are now in a housing crisis, and without a meaningful urban policy and a fragile construction industry. This is the product of political decisions, urged on by developers and bankers, for decades.
在某种程度上，像伍拉拉这样的提案感觉只是做做样子，实际上什么也不会发生。尽管住房协议列出了令人眼花缭乱的巨大数字，目标却未能达成，建筑商因成本上升而破产——仅去年就有3,472家建筑公司倒闭——技术工人短缺更是助长了极具分裂性的移民辩论。
At one level, proposals like Woollahra feel performative, that nothing will actually happen. Despite the bamboozlingly big numbers of the housing accord, targets are not being met, builders are going broke as costs rise – 3,472 construction companies last year – and the shortage of skilled workers is spinning the divisive immigration debate.
4月，澳大利亚规划学会发布了一份杰出的报告《良性增长》，呼吁就住房以及容纳1400万额外人口所需的城市类型进行更严肃的讨论，而此时人工智能正威胁着冲击现有的城市型劳动力。
In April the Planning Institute of Australia produced an outstanding paper Growing Well, urging a more serious discussion about housing and types of cities needed to accommodate 14 million more people at a time when AI threatens to pummel the current city-based workforce.
报告问道：我们想要特大城市？还是围绕州首府、交通便利且宜居的卫星城市？亦或是沿着高铁网络的区域性发展，让中等规模城市在全国范围内成长，就像大多数其他发达社会那样。
Do we want mega cities, it asked. Or accessible and congenial satellite cities that orbit the state capitals. Or regional developments that follow a fast rail network and allow medium-sized cities to grow across the country, as happens in most other developed societies.
这才是我们需要进行的严肃对话。它需要产出真正宜居的解决方案，而非空谈、利润和高楼大厦。
That is the serious conversation we need to have. It needs to produce real, livable, solutions, not just platitudes, profits and towers.