By David Whish-Wilson, 2013. Acquired from New Editions.
(I own this book, but have not read it yet.)
The most substantial difference between the newer suburbs and the old is due to the fact that when the older suburbs were conceived there wasn't the machinery to grade the individual blocks, or to infill each subdivision to make sure that it rose above the water table. As a result, what is appealing about the older suburbs isn't that they are leafier, and therefore cooler in summer, but that the blocks rise and fall upon the rests and swales of the hardened limestone dunes that roll inland across the the plain. Each house and street conforms to its original and cambered landscape, and often some of the original flora remains. Newer suburbs are generally bulldozed and re-contoured with powerful machinery according to a design predicated upon the level, taking out all of the native bush in one sweep.
—p.180