NEW DANGER DISCOVERED

Australia, already one of the most urbanized countries, is in danger of increasingly dense urban populations. Danger? Many:

We might see a worsening of the obesity epidemic that we already have, and I think just in terms of their general psychological wellbeing we might see children that are more stressed, less confident, less outward-looking, more insular and introspective.

One imagines, sort of, high-rise environments in which children are really marginal, a generation of Ritalin-dependent children who are kind of sad because we've marginalised them.

There is a higher likelihood that there will be exposure to violence and, just because people are living on top of each other, and that often the poorer environments have higher rates of unemployment and alcohol use and so these things compound to make it often very detrimental to children's development.

How would Sydneysider children, already living in a sardine-like density of 345.7 persons per square kilometre (4023 persons per square kilometre in inner Sydney), manage to cope with the 24,448 persons per square kilometres of Paris (over 100,000 persons per square kilometres in some areas)? They could always keep their weight down, fitness levels up and nerves calm by attacking police and burning cars and busses. Maybe we should start putting Ritalin in the water.