I left some trivial comments to a story in the local rag about the possibility of a light rail (or, less euphemistically, "tram") service in Coffs. Preserving here because it's a pretty succinct summary of my views on town planning.

Connecting a Harbour Drive tram service to Rodney Degens' long-ago-proposed commuter rail service on the existing train line, to villages to the north and south of Coffs, is a no-brainer. You'd see a huge increase in local trade, which would also reduce the current losses to the supermarket duopoly and parasitic mall barons. With fares set at a reasonable level and services through the evening, you'd get much less drink driving, and a healthier community generally, with people walking to the nearest station rather than driving door-to-door from home to the mall.

And I agree with [previous and prolific commentor] picman2; the hideous CBD needs be bulldozed and rebuilt from scratch to human scale, rather than multi-story carpark scale. I never thought I would see the words "I agree with picman2", much less write them myself. The situation is that bad.

Then a reply from picman2, asserting that: "The CBD should be very modern with multi levels though. Coffs Harbour has no real historic streets of store buildings to protect so they may as well go ultra modern." To which I replied:

There's nothing modern about shopping malls. As pointless overconsumption shifts to Ebay and Amazon, big box malls are becoming white elephants. Planners need to think about creating nice places to spend time in, in order to retain some semblance of a local retail economy. Otherwise consumers will retreat to their Colorbond fortresses to wait for their packages of tomorrow's garbage to arrive from cyberspace.