Malcolm Turnbull has been getting very excited about the future of Australia’s cities.

Last month the Prime Minister announced a new “smart cities” plan which could see our cities transformed into urban and suburban utopias where your journey to work, home, the shops, and wherever else you need to be takes no longer than 30 minutes, ideally by public transport.

City commuters will surely welcome the idea of doing away with the stress of endless traffic jams and cramped, unreliable public transport. The less time you have to spend with your face jammed in a stranger’s armpit, the better, right?

But if you’re imagining futuristic high-speed trains, perfect public transport systems, and beautiful free-flowing roads allowing you to cross the biggest cities in only half an hour, think again.

The key to achieving these fantastic “30-minute cities” is not just finding a way to transport people more efficiently; it’s about making their journeys shorter in the first place.

Mr Turnbull’s plans will mean transforming the way our cities and suburbs are planned and constructed so that we gravitate around regional hubs rather than one big centre.

That’s if it ever actually happens.

SPECTACULARLY UNSUCCESSFUL
Although the PM won’t stop banging on about this wonderful idea, the concept of decentralised cities has been around for a while.

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) urban development professor Mike Berry highlights the fact that strategic plans have been on the cards in Victoria since the early 1970s.

A report published less than two years ago examined ways that areas of Melbourne could be redeveloped so that all residents had work and entertainment within 20 minutes of their homes.

Reports like this are all very well, but no matter how convincing the argument they make, no matter how wonderful the new city plan sounds, there is rarely any action taken as a result.

Prof Berry likens the task of decentralising our cities to that of turning around a battleship.

“The idea is to somehow reverse the battleship of the ever-changing urban sprawl, so that more people can get to those services and jobs more quickly, or at least within the time frame that’s proposed,” he said.

“The difficulty is that most economic, cultural and political forces are working in the opposite direction.”

Prof Berry describes the policies that have been put in place with the aim of shifting the direction of urban development as “spectacularly unsuccessful”.

The result of these shorter journey times is that we end up living in a regional bubble where we take the bus to work, then on to the supermarket or a bar, and then back home again. It might have many benefits on paper, but in reality it just sounds a bit boring.

Believe it or not, those congested roads and long journeys help provide us with the variety we crave.

A NICE QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD
Creating more jobs near residential areas certainly won’t go down well with people who cherish a quiet suburban lifestyle.

“People leave the inner city for more space,” Prof Berry says.

“We all know you can choose your house but you can’t choose your neighbours. If you move into your quiet neighbourhood and all of a sudden next door development begins at five times the density, you’ve got yourself a totally different neighbourhood.”

Many young homebuyers end up living further from the city than they would like because of financial restrictions and would no doubt welcome the chance to be closer to work and a variety of entertainment. But for others who have purposely chosen a peaceful suburb as their home, plans for decentralisation could ruin the atmosphere that originally attracted them.

SO WHAT’S THE PLAN?
Mr Turnbull wants us to rethink the way we plan, build and manage cities with the aim of increasing employment, creating more affordable housing, and cutting congestion. He recently revealed a new funding plan to transform infrastructure such as railways and roads.

The government is initially going to put $50 million towards fast-tracking planning on urban rail and other major projects. It will then encourage private investment and “city deals” among state governments that contribute to the national goal.

The government also plans to take advantage of “value capture” on major projects, meaning that the increase in value to the area surrounding a project is used to offset the project costs.

The concept of the 30-minute city is given as a possible goal for Australia’s cities as part of the “smart cities” policy.

HOW REALISTIC IS IT, REALLY?
Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett has called the 30-minute city concept a “great idea”, but thinks it will never happen in his lifetime.

He’s 68 now, and with former treasurer Joe Hockey predicting that future Australians will live to an amazing 150 years, that gives us a target date of 2098 to implement the 30-minute dream city if we’re going to prove Mr Kennett wrong.

Granted, politicians’ opinions are not the most reliable basis for city planning, but the experts agree that things aren’t going to change overnight.

“You’re talking decades, not years,” Mr Berry says.

“The thing about a battleship is it sails in one direction and really moves in. If you want to turn it around it’s got to be with something very strong and invasive.”

Mr Berry is pessimistic about the time it will take for federal, state and local governments to get their act together and coordinate any kind of change, and believes that public support for the policy could be slow to come.

“There would be large scale development and significant dollars involved, and that’s got to happen within a political context,” he said.

“It’s not as if we have a centralised system where a planning agency says do this and do this, and things happen. Things generally don’t happen quickly. But what’s encouraging is that a lot of what happens in cities and suburban settlements to make them vibrant are often unplanned. It requires sensitive local government planning and a little bit of state government investment, but vibrant and liveable cities can slowly develop in an almost organic way.”

So if you’re reading this at work after an hour stuck in traffic, then it looks like you will have to put up with that commute for a while longer.