Counter-urbanisation in pre-pandemic times: disentangling the influences of amenity and disamenity

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated a resurgence in counter-urbanisation in Australia with ex-urban populations leaving behind the perceived disamenity of city life for simpler, cheaper and lockdown-free lives. This article investigates the drivers of in-migration and net migration into non-metropolitan New South Wales from the metropolitan zone between 2011 and 2016, focusing on the potential draw of rural amenity, together with the potential ‘push’ factors of urban disamenity. The results show that non-metropolitan NSW is becoming less dependent on counter-urbanisation flows from Sydney, while simultaneously seeing stronger net migration gains from interchanges with the broad metropolitan zone. Hypothesis testing upheld the contention that rural amenity accounted for a statistically significant share of the variance in in-migration - and net migration - from Sydney. However, the hypothesis that Sydney’s perceived disamenity is leading to out-migration flows and net migration losses was not well supported, confounded by mis-specification issues. High population densities are associated with out-migration from the Sydney region to all categories of settlement within the remainder of NSW and Australia. However, changes in density are only a strong and reliable influence on net migration within the broad Sydney metropolitan area but the direction of that influence is positive rather than negative. The article reveals that the proportion of immigrants within a metropolitan local government area population is negatively associated with out-migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Counter-urbanisation
• rural New South Wales
• Sydney
• population density
• rural amenity
• international migration

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contribution of two anonymous reviewers in improving the quality of the article, and also express their gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Caitlin Buckle and Nick Osbaldiston, for their patience and guidance throughout.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neil Argent

Neil Argent is professor of human geography. His research interests focus broadly on rural communities' capacities to adapt to social, demographic, economic and environmental change.

Paul Plummer

Paul Plummer is professor of economic geography. He has an international reputation as a spatial economic analyst who employs mathematical and statistical models to answer foundational theoretical and methodological questions into the dynamics of capitalist space economies, whilst simultaneously engaging in empirical oriented and policy relevant research arenas.