Relocating Disadvantage in Five Australian Cities: Socio-spatial Polarisation under Neo-liberalism

The authors are indebted to the comments of two anonymous reviewers whose valuable and thoughtful comments have hopefully improved the paper. As always, all remaining errors of fact and judgement remain the responsibility of the authors.

Abstract

During the mid-1980s, the Australian political discourse shifted decisively towards a neo-liberal political agenda that has remained the dominant policy paradigm ever since. Arguably, a key outcome of this has been an increase in social inequality. However, there has been little acknowledgement of this process in Australian urban policy debates. Yet these social outcomes have been accompanied by distinctive impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the Australian city. Using Census data over a 25 year period between 1986 and 2011, this paper analyses the trend towards a marked suburbanisation of the most disadvantaged households in the five major Australian cities. Its conclusions have relevance for current metropolitan planning strategies and their capacity to address what is emerging as Australia’s version of the now more widely recognised “urban inversion” of the last quarter of a century.

1980 年代中期，新自由主义政治议程决定了澳大利亚政治话语，并自此一直保持统治地 位。这一转向导致了社会不平等日益加剧。然而，尽管这样的后果明显影响了澳大利亚城 市的社会-空间结构，澳大利亚城市政策争论中却很少涉及这一过程。本文利用1986 年- 2011 年这25 年间的人口普查数据，分析澳大利亚五大城市中最低收入家庭的郊区化趋势。 文章的结论有助于目前的都市规划策略，及其应对澳大利亚近25 年来出现的“城市逆转” 现象的能力。

Keywords:

• Suburbanisation
• social disadvantage
• inequality
• spatial polarisation
• Australian cities

Notes

The authors are indebted to the comments of two anonymous reviewers whose valuable and thoughtful comments have hopefully improved the paper. As always, all remaining errors of fact and judgement remain the responsibility of the authors.