Unfortunately, last week the ABC didn’t think a regional perspective was necessary on the Q&A program that followed its 4 Corners report. A sophisticated regional view was absent, even though the audience forced the panel to clumsily engage with the issues. Then in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Martin doubled down on this bad start, arguing building new cities is hard and that Canberra is the only example of Australia achieving that goal.

This view of our recent history is plain wrong. It misses arguably the last 40 years in Australia’s urbanisation journey – the growth of our great small cities. Australia has developed a network of great small cities from Cairns in the north to the increasingly vibrant capital of the south in Hobart. Canberra is now a thriving and growing city. What about the Gold Coast, which has grown from a coastal town to a city well on the way to 1 million people? What about Newcastle and Wollongong in NSW and Geelong in Victoria, which has avoided becoming Australia’s Detroit and is emerging as a brighter and more successful small city?

Twenty years ago, we had a network of provincial country and coastal towns. Since then, a concentration of regional growth means we have 31 new cities whose population is sufficient to generate much of the economic performance of our largest cities.

We now have a national network of small cities with the capacity for much stronger growth without the congestion and other costs locked into the development of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

The Regional Australia Institute has been looking hard at the recent development of our small city network. Our conclusion is these cities are ready to go to their next level, as they are already successful urban players in their own right. We expect they will grow and succeed regardless of decision on the population pressure in our big cities. But we must look properly at the merits of shifting some outer suburban growth to these areas.

Existing small cities are better placed to contribute economically and socially than the next batch of disused paddocks on the fringes of Sydney and Melbourne. They have emerging CBDs ripe for development that can deliver the kind of urban amenity our big cities offer, they have hospitals and services networks, they have land. They have existing industries and innovation capacity.

Unfortunately the debate is blinded by the dominance of the inner city view, supporting the pervasive myth that regions are stuck in a cycle of low or no growth, are a second rate investment and a poor career choice.

Regardless of the “big Australia” debate we expect to see growth in our great small cities to regather pace. The ripple effect from the housing boom and prices in inner Melbourne and Sydney is pushing people to look elsewhere. This is a good thing. We estimate that for every 100,000 people who choose small cities instead of big cities, $50 billion is released into the economy through avoided congestion and mortgage costs.

If we could achieve this level of change every two years through better policies, growth would even out and many of the mega city challenges could be more easily resolved. It’s time to take a proper look at the regional option. Jack Archer is chief executive of the Regional Australia Institute.