Beauty, Nature Strips and Well-Being
Across Brisbane (Queensland, Australia), we are fortunate to have a lot of trees and lawns that cool and oxygenate our city and suburbs.
Nature strips are Council land and there’s A LOT of them in front of private and public property. Council is responsible for maintaining trees under power lines, in public parks and other vegetation in public places. It’s a huge job and they have arborists and an army of workers with cherry-pickers, ride-on mowers and whipper-snippers. It also supports local volunteer creek care organizations. However, Council doesn’t have the resources to maintain nature strips in front of every private property. There is simply too much of it. But that’s not a bad thing. Green, tree-lined streets are what we all want. Those of us who care to, maintain the grass on the verge ourselves to keep the neighbourhood beautiful. And many do so without stopping to ask who should do it; we just do it because it’s right there, it’s our street and we want it to be beautiful.
It is at this level of private ownership that Milton Friedman’s Monetarist Theory of responsibility works so well. If you own it, you’ll take care of it.
But if you don’t live there or use it yourself, long term, your care stops at the fence line; aesthetics be damned. Many nature strips go unattended and most of them front properties that belong to investors. I saw the same thing in Canada.
However, home ownership is not enough. There are homeowners who want to live in a green, tree-lined street and have moved to one because it fits their idea of a better life. Being accustomed to putting their own needs first, mowing the nature strip is somebody else’s problem.
Occasionally, there are unfortunate homeowners who fall into despair or disability (or both). Their nature strips are neglected and so are their ramshackled houses.
Most of us know the verge belongs to the Council. I’ve heard that technically, private property owners can charge Council for mowing the lawn themselves if Council doesn’t do it. However, I doubt this is true because a nearby enterprising Malay property investor poisons his nature strip, complaining that the Council won’t do it for him.
Apparently the City Council will mow your front verge if you complain long, loud and hard enough. At a crossroad nearby, the Council mows one corner belonging to a family of new arrivals from China and disregards the other three corner properties who don’t complain. Public relations is everything, it seems.
Some new arrivals are good neighbours and mow their nature strip themselves.
Personally I think Council should only do it for people without the physical or financial means to do it themselves. Even some elderly, sick or disabled people are not so poor or helpless that they can’t pay someone $35/hr once a month to do it. It’s really not hard.
It all depends on what kind of city and neighbourhood we want to live in. And what we want Council to use our rates for. Personally I’d rather Council wasn’t diverted from maintaining public spaces to cater to the whingers. Mowing a nature strip is a small ask of property owners and if they don’t do it, we can say goodbye to beautiful suburbia or expect a huge hike in our property rates.
I thought Brisbane’s LNP government ran a pretty tight ship. In terms of public relations, it’s a neat show. But this nature strip story mirrors a larger picture of placating public discontent and fiscal mismanagement. I was recently told by my local Councillor’s staffer that Councils’ budget is in the red and that’s why they’re currently not spending much (until the next election looms). I’ve heard through other reliable sources that the LNP (Liberal National Party) government has lowered the fees developers have to pay, not to mention other regulations that allow them to land bank and profit from the housing shortage. Focussed as they are on PR and ‘growing’ the city, Council’s budget will never have enough to improve older suburbs like mine by, for example, putting power lines underground. There isn’t even enough for more greening, such as native grasses on median strips on Council roads. That isn’t happening because concrete requires less maintenance. Kessels Road is an example (image below). It’s a state road, but the same logic applies. The trees and grasses were removed from Kessels Road and concreted over a few years ago to add extra lanes.
There are swathes of concrete median strips across the city where Australian native grasses could be growing. They’re low maintenance, don’t obscure drivers’ view and open up the ground to rain water, helping to prevent flooding.
Council would be better off with a hard and fast rule about mowing nature strips in front of privately owned properties and itself save some money. Let nature strips speak for the kind of property market we create. If we value beauty and well-being in our suburbs, we have to aim for a cohesive society of proud home-owners. But to do that, we have to let go of property speculation and indiscriminate immigration. Too many voters, business people and politicians are wedded to them. Too few can see that it’s in their long-term interest to unshackle themselves from both forms of growth.
Our city may be greener than it was a hundred years ago, but it is a far larger sprawl of dark-roofed, yardless cookie-cutter lots crammed along more asphalt roads than ever. These badly designed and cheaply built suburbs will deteriorate and become unlivable in about 25 years when the climate is warmer. That is my prediction based on the maintenance of my fourteen year old home, which was built by a better-than-average standard home construction company. Those suburbs will have to be reworked and a lower population will help. Imagine a 10% Capital Gains Tax discount for selling a property to an adjoining one (or some other tax break if it’s a principle place of residence) to allow the return of yard space and orchards. Imagine Council resuming the noisy, cheap properties at intersections and turning them into parkland. This is just one example of how SHRINKING the physical economy will benefit us.
Capitalists are keen on speculation and socialists are keen on immigration. Capitalists care for beauty, but they’re willing to sacrifice it for personal profit. Socialists don’t seem to care for beauty, just as long as everyone gets a Council flat.
Beauty is a worthy goal.
Originally published at http://equanimity.blog on January 28, 2025.
