Strategic Planning for Employment Self-Containment in Metropolitan Sub-Regions

Abstract

Metropolitan strategic plans often focus on strengthening local employment opportunities to address the congestion and commuting issues threatening city sustainability. The success of such strategies relies on a more equitable distribution of jobs between sub-regions and can be comparatively benchmarked through one of the three related measures of employment self-sufficiency, self-containment or jobs-housing balance. However, in practice, planning policy implementation to meet these targets seldom reduces automobile commuting. This paper investigates self-containment across a range of occupation and industry types to highlight large differences in commuting and employment patterns through a case study of Perth’s Northwest sub-region, Western Australia. Its findings suggest the application of current sub-regional policy and targets within Perth may reinforce the wage and skill disadvantage of outer metropolitan sub-regions over the inner core. It recommends a more nuanced understanding of these measures taking into account the complex dynamics of both employment opportunities and commuting patterns across sub-regions of a city.

城市战略规划常常以增加就地就业机会为焦点，以便解决威胁到城市可持续性的拥堵和通勤问题。这种规划若要落实，就需要在各地区之间较为平均地分配工作，并且必须以三个相关的就业措施中的一个为标志：自足、自闭或工作-住房的平衡。然而实际上，以此为目标的规划政策实施并没有减少依靠汽车的通勤。本文研究不同职业和工种的自闭性，通过西澳大利亚珀斯市西北区的案例研究，探讨通勤和就业模式的巨大差异。研究结果显示，珀斯目前的城区政策和目标会进一步加重城市边缘区域相对于中心区域的工资和技术劣势。文章提出对这些措施应加深理解，认识城市不同区域就业机会和通勤模式的复杂动力。

Key words:

• Self-sufficiency
• self-containment
• job-housing balance
• commuting
• employment decentralisation
• urban policy

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Doina Olaru from the University of Western Australia for her statistical advice, as well as the Planning and Transport Research Centre (PATREC).