Now, residential areas always spread somewhere.  Now's the time to plan a balance between settlements and open spaces. It is an urgent matter in the Hunter valley and all over. Promised funds should be used to plan our Hunter communities. Without any dim reaction towards ''progress''.
Vast sprawling suburbs covering every hill and dale are less workable and permanently blot the unique landscapes that we love.
Patches of high density with pleasant surrounds are called for together with overall rationalisation of developments. And fragmentation of land use is undesirable where each locality dabbles with selling off lands around its edges.
We must do better than ten acre blocks and offer smaller alternatives to the general population to enjoy and even take the pressure off the tendency to gravitate to a overblown mega city to our south.
Newcastle CBD will do for the present time.  Instead, focus on the overall picture.