Urban Design - Why do we get it sooooo wrong???

Brisbane and the South East corner of Queensland is slowly dying. It thinks it is a young, vibrant city - and indeed, the city of Brisbane certainly is a stunner - just a pity it has come at the cost of the urban fringe which is ensuring that it slowly squeezes the life out of the South East corner.

But why has this had to happen. Many have argued for years that this was coming - that without a suitable hand on the tiller and with careful and planned development, that Brisbane would soon become this horrible urban smear stretching from Noosa in the north to Coolongatta in the South. And, unsurprising, this horrible vision has come true - and look at the consequences:

• Core public services (water, hospitals, public transport, roads) all straining under the load
• Water at a premium
• Land at a premium

And at what cost? What of:

• The health of its citizens?
• The health of the environment?
• The viability of the entire region?

And yet, it could have all been avoided.

Brisbane faced the crossroads in the late eighties when the first signs of burgeoning growth were evident. The city was faced with two options:

1. Allow the city to continue to burst at the seams - a development at all costs approach OR
2. Encourage satellite cities to nurture the entire region.

Our proposal was simple.

1. Put a physical boundary on the growth of ALL centre's in the South East - Brisbane, Logan, Caboolture, Ispwich, Toowoomba, Esk, Beaudesert, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast
2. Establish HIGH SPEED traffic corridors between these centres (this was to mean both road AND rail - but with a particular emphasis on rail as they can be used to encourage development hotspots (its useless having a subdivision if it's not serviced by rail whereas as long as the road goes past the front door...))
3. Force each "satellite" to population limits based on resources available (water, available land, etc).
   
4. Let each centre develop and compete for development.

It seems so simple now - yet they stuffed it and look at the consequences.

Question is, how do we convince Townsville/Thuringowa to avoid going down the same path?