The Changing City: An Australian Political Economic Perspective

This study measures where gentrification has been occurring in the past decade in Australia's three major cities: Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Based on existing theory, an analytical framework is built to locate gentrification, which takes into account various demographic indicators and spatial markers, The findings are quite surprising, and contradict earlier urban geography theories that frame gentrification as an inner-city phenomenon. The highest levels of gentrification are not found in the immediate inner cities but rather in a band located 5 to 15 km from the CBDs. In contrast to outer suburbs, the inner suburbs in all three cities are relatively stable and affluent at this point, with median house prices surpassing one million dollars, and median incomes substantially higher than average. The 'new middle class' which has traditionally been associated with inner city gentrification is unable to access the housing market in these previously gentrified suburbs, and is therefore moving outwards.

1992

European Planning Studies, 2004

This article considers suburban development in Australia through the lens of its second largest city, Melbourne. Contemporary urban policies have focussed on the low densities within Australia's capitals and tried to achieve sustainability through urban consolidation policies. The article argues that these policies are often based on a distorted understanding of the relationship between housing markets and labour markets in Australia's large metropolises. The analysis of suburban development in Melbourne shows that suburban development involves complex links between changes in housing and job location and that urban sustainability policy needs to include actions designed to change the distribution of employment as well as the location and density of housing. The article shows that the vast spread of the Melbourne population masks closely linked regional labour and housing markets.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1994

Australian Economic History Review, 2009

Urban growth is a major theme in economic development and a policy imperative for developed countries that seek to create sustainable cities. We argue that the past weighs heavily on the ability of societies to sustainably manage urban environments. The policy implications of urban history are revealed in comparisons of cities across times and between places. The special issue presents some of the best recent work on the economic and social history of Australian cities. We aim to encourage historians to incorporate urban variables into studies of historical processes and to persuade policymakers to consider historical trends in their analysis.

Urban Policy and Research, 2009

2012

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DISP, 2021

Australia is the most suburbanised country on earth. The ' Australian Dream' of a house in the suburbs has long reflected the sense of entitlement that urban Australians have to the financial security, private space and amenity that the Dream promises. Since around the turn of the century, governments at every level have been attempting to arrest suburban sprawl for its negative social, environmental and economic impacts. However, neoliberal economic and planning environments have exacerbated regulatory failure, so attempts to create compact cities have done little to provide genuine alternatives to suburban life or address low-quality sprawl in newly built outer suburbs. Unrestrained house price inflation, assisted by an investor-friendly taxation regime, has led to a situation where the housing outcome, the Dream, enjoyed by previous generations is becoming impossible. Overlaying this is an ideological environment that pits the suburbs against the inner city as a battle in the 'culture wars' and serves to obliterate any nuance, diversity or possibility for progressive change into the public debate. Fig. 1: New outer suburban development under construction in Springfield Queensland.

2007

All five of Australia's largest metropolitan areas are actively considering the best policy framework to deal with anticipated growth. For SE Queensland and Perth the pressures are immediate and powerful as burgeoning economies and significant inward migration put a premium on developable land. The pressures in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide are less intense but remain an issue in the longer term. Cities which have opted for Urban Growth Boundaries are faced with a significant decision as to the elasticity of those boundaries and the relationship between urban consolidation and expansion. This paper makes a comparative review of current growth strategies for the major Australian metropolitan areas (Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and SE Queensland) and specifically seeks to address two fundamental questions: What is the chosen strategy to accommodate growth - urban consolidation, extensions to existing urban growth boundaries, the expansion of townships beyond the existing ur...

This paper examines the nature of land use change over the long term in cities. It constitutes part of ongoing international research collaboration on the shaping of modern cities. The research seeks to understand the drivers of change, whether change is a gradual or discrete process, and the role of institutions in change. The central hypothesis of the research programme is that city structures change slowly due to path dependence that reflects inertia, increasing returns and transactions costs, but there are defining periods that produce major changes. These changes may flow from deliberate institutional interventions (such as infrastructure investment and policy change) or exogenous shocks (such as natural disaster, war, and technical change). We present the findings from a pilot study that employs property rate records and planning schemes to chart very long run changes in land use in the suburb of Carlton, Melbourne. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of this kind of research, and the potential importance of land ownership patterns to path dependence in urban development. If these findings were to be replicated more generally, they would suggest that an understanding of contemporary urban land use requires a more nuanced understanding of long run continuity and change in cities.