Counterurbanisation, demographic change and discourses of rural revival in Australia during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The term ‘counterurbanisation’ is receiving renewed academic attention due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While not in vogue in popular discourse, the concepts invoked by the term counterurbanisation often appear uncritically in popular media as a Covid-19-induced rural renaissance. This article presents four arguments about using ‘counterurbanisation’ as a term and its applicability in the Australian context. I argue that ‘counterurbanisation’ emerged when categories of urban and rural were less theoretically problematic, and that being unidirectional it does not capture the diversity of migration dynamics. Third, in the Australian context, counterurbanisation is inaccurately often associated in the popular imagination with migration to rural productive landscapes. Fourth, the contemporary measurement and representation of counterurbanisation is flawed. While accepting that various forms of counterurbanisation are occurring, which is important in coastal and near-urban locations, the concept has little relevance for many Australian towns whose future will emerge outside the discourse of counterurbanisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural
• urban
• telecommuting
• amenity region
• housing
• demography
• pandemic

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the referees who engaged with the original submission and have helped to improve it. Any errors remain the author’s responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phil McManus

Phil McManus is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Geography at the University of Sydney. He has published numerous articles on urban and regional research, plus co-authored and co-edited books on rural and regional Australia, including Land of Discontent (UNSW Press, 2000) and Rural Revival (Ashgate, 2011) and urban Australia in Vortex Cities to Sustainable Cities (UNSW Press, 2005).