Prosperity along Australia's Eastern Seaboard: Sydney and the geopolitics of urban and economic change

Throughout the last decade, the Australian economy has experienced its second longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in recorded history. The paper argues that this prosperity is sourced from an extraordinary surge in finance-based economic activity along Australia's eastern seaboard, especially in the Sydney region. Population growth in the Sydney basin has further fuelled the region's economic growth. The spatialised nature of this prosperity has produced a major shift in distributional outcomes across Australian regions and among households. Sydney-based households, especially those in inner 'global Sydney' neighbourhoods, have had access to high rates of job creation and sustained increases in income and house values. On the other hand, non-metropolitan households away from Sydney--those in regional and rural Australia--have experienced largely negative consequences as historical inter-sectoral and spatial redistribution mechanisms have been dismantled. The paper shows how divergent experiences of the new prosperity have produced an unstable political landscape in regional and rural Australia. It concludes by urging further research into the spatialised nature of economic changes in Australia, especially research that is conscious of distributional flows and outcomes.     

Immigrant city,global city? Advantage and disadvantage among communities from Asia in Sydney

This paper examines the patterns of residential concentration and dispersion and the socio‐economic profiles of major immigrant groups from Asia in Sydney at the 1991 Census, taken soon after the largest immigrant boom in Sydney's urban history, which occurred between 1986 and 1988. It makes use of detailed birthplace, language and religion cross‐tabulations by area and socio‐economic indicators, as well as four‐digit occupational data from the Census. It then tests to what extent immigration flows from different parts of Asia have been linked to Sydney's emergence as a global city, and whether the disadvantage or advantage associated with the settlement of some communities is tied to restructuring, globalisation, language difficulties, residential concentration, or other factors.     

Planning a Prosperous Sydney: The challenges of planning urban development in the new urban context

Since their post-war inception, Sydney's metropolitan plans have tended to be overtaken by the social, economic and environmental conditions they have had to confront. The depth and scope of Sydney's recent urban transformation threatens again to overtake metropolitan planning capacity creating, in the context of competitive globalisation, a potentially significant market disadvantage for the city, not to mention poor urban development outcomes. This paper reviews Sydney's post-war metropolitan planning strategies, examining the social and economic contexts and the policy paradigms in which they have been framed, in order to draw out the lessons to be learned from their successes and failures. We argue that future success in planning urban development will rely on richly informed and fine-grained understanding of the complex spatial outcomes of Sydney's ever-deeper global integration. Only such fine-grained understanding can empower metropolitan planning to be responsive to the evolving challenges of managing development in the contemporary urban context.     

Industry Clusters and Sydney's ITT Sector: northern Sydney as ‘Australia's Silicon Valley’?

This paper examines the claim that the North Ryde–North Sydney arc is Australia's ‘Silicon Valley’, seeking firstly to identify the empirical validities behind the claim, and secondly to ask how the documented patterns might be explained. The paper evidences the fact that this area indeed provides the pre-eminent site for Australia's information technology and telecommunications (ITT) sector. However, examination of this industry suggests that its expansion in Sydney has been motivated primarily by the increasing centrality of advanced producer services within the high-order business sector. It is Sydney's attributes for multinational business, as opposed to the propulsive dynamics of local clustering per se, which appears to explain the spatial concentration of these activities. Thus, it is the urbanisation economies of Sydney more than the localisation economies of the ITT sector which account for the growth of this sector in the city. Nevertheless, localisation economies are sporadically significant, suggesting that Sydney's ITT sector is to a certain extent a hybrid product of the two types of economies.     

Planning for Peri-urban Agriculture: a geographically-specific,evidence-based approach from Sydney

Agriculture on the fringes of cities across the Global North is increasingly perceived as making an important contribution to urban sustainability. As Australian cities continue to expand and encroach on their peri-urban peripheries, there is rising concern about loss of farmland to housing. Such concerns are especially urgent in the Sydney Basin, due to population growth, and topographical and land-use constraints. Accounting for the Basin's farmlands, however, remains opaque, not unrelated to difficulties in acquiring reliable data on the area and value of Sydney's agricultural industries. The problem is not simply that there are no data available but rather that the nature of existing data is (often hotly) contested. Critical questions for urban planners therefore remain unanswered, including: is peri-urban agriculture as important as advocates suggest? Are metropolitan food supplies under threat? If peri-urban farmland is important, what should be done to preserve it? In collating and analysing existing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and non-ABS data on Sydney agriculture between 1992 and 2011, we outline the need for more reliable and consistent longitudinal data to enable better planning for Sydney's farmland into the future. Notwithstanding limitations of available data sources, our findings reveal trends in Sydney Basin agriculture that invite debate on many assumptions about the nature of peri-urban agriculture. These findings emphasise the importance of geographically specific, evidence-based analysis as a basis for planning for peri-urban agriculture.     

Scenarios for the Future Population of Sydney

The period 1996-2001 has witnessed a refocusing of population growth on Sydney and Melbourne as both cities have developed significant concentrations of so-called 'new economy' jobs and taken on, to greater or lesser extents, the characteristics of global cities. The consequence of these trends, for Sydney most particularly, is population growth. This paper establishes this demographic reality by describing recent demographic trends in Sydney and possible future scenarios for Sydney's population, given differing levels of fertility, internal migration and international migration. A related future trend is also traced--that the number of households in Sydney will grow more rapidly than the population due to changes in household structure. This raises the issue of how and where these households will be accommodated, given the relative land shortage in the Sydney Statistical Division and given that there is no doubt that planners in New South Wales will be attempting to maintain and enhance Sydney's status as a global city. In sum, the paper argues that Sydney planners should be preparing for growth of around one million people in the next 20 years and a further one million in the following 30 years. To maintain that potential future residents of Sydney can be redirected to other parts of New South Wales is a vain hope.     

Evolution of Chinese Settlement Geographies in Sydney,Australia

In 1996, there were 250,000 people of Chinese ancestry in metropolitan Sydney. Eighty percent of the first generations among Chinese who arrived in Australia after 1973 were migrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia and 20% from China. Some of the migration from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia is skilled migration, a portion of which comprises business professionals in producer services associated with Sydney's emergent global city role. There is no strong level of residential concentration except for those of refugee origin. The sponsored family reunion relatives of the skilled migrants are present indirectly because of the globalization process, although others from the former Indochina are of refugee migration origin. There are thus economic inequalities among different origin groups of Chinese in Sydney. Complex Chinese presences have evolved in Sydney at the neighborhood level partly related to social class, and there are visible impacts in a rejuvenated Chinatown and in several suburban shopping and commercial centers. These presences overlap in terms of community origins, social class, language, and religion but there are discrete impacts in the context of diversity.     

Prosperity and the Suburban Dream: Quality of life and affordability in western Sydney

Over the past 10 years Sydney has experienced a remarkable wave of economic prosperity and growth, partly due to its developing role as a regionally significant global city. Through this period, maintaining the quality of life in the city has been regarded as particularly important. Yet traditional accounts of the global city have stressed quality-of-life features of the inner city. In this paper I examine the implications of the prosperity of global Sydney for the quality of life of western Sydney, paying particular attention to environmental amenity and the affordability of housing. The paper argues, first, that growth in the Sydney region has depended upon continued growth in western Sydney. It highlights key instances in which residents have resisted developments associated with this growth and regarded as major threats to the environmental amenity of the region. Second, the paper argues that the prosperity of Sydney, combined with changes to government policy, have impacted upon the supply of affordable rental housing in western Sydney. This is particularly significant in the case of public housing. Managing growth in the city will require attention to managing quality-of-life issues in the metropolis as a whole.     

An Analysis of the Relationship Between Housing Foreclosures,Lending Practices,and Neighborhood Ecology: Evidence from a Distressed County

Residential foreclosures increased sharply during the 1990s and in the first years of the twenty-first century. These foreclosures have profound impacts on the households and neighborhoods involved. Although foreclosures occur everywhere, the geography of foreclosures displays a pattern tied to a metropolitan area's social, fiscal, and economic geography. We examine these correspondences as they exist within Summit County (Akron), Ohio, between 2001 and 2003. Foreclosures themselves often result from unfortunate financial events that can affect any household, but we found that the geography of foreclosures corresponds primarily to Summit County's racial distribution, above and beyond any correspondence with income levels and housing fiscal stress. There also exists a clear coincidence of foreclosures with subprime lending, itself associated with Summit County's racial patterns. Concentrations of foreclosures in particular neighborhoods can be tremendously harmful to the social and economic health of the neighborhood. These comparisons help us to better understand the neighborhood ecology of foreclosure rates and subprime lending.     

Islam in Sydney: Contesting the Discourse of Absence

Non‐recognition is one of the key modes of re‐inscribing the Other. In Sydney's anti‐mosque politics this form of oppression was manifest as a discourse of absence. Sydney Muslims have been portrayed as non‐existent within, or external to, localities where mosques have been proposed. In these circumstances claims to belonging and citizenship by Sydney Muslims have been fundamentally injured. Census data are used to challenge the historical and contemporary constructions of Islamic absence in Australia. Sydney Muslims are a culturally diverse and somewhat disparate faith group. They are increasingly present in areas outside of the initial zones of residential focus. This diversity and dynamism is a substantial challenge for Islamic community building (Ummah) in Sydney and presents rich foci for further research.     

THE CHANGING LOCATION OF PHYSICIAN OFFICES IN BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL,ILLINOIS: 1870–1988

Three locational patterns of physician offices during the last 120 years are identified in the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area. Offices first clustered within the CBD at dispersed sites, then concentrated at two sites within the CBD. Most recently, the CBD cluster has essentially dispersed while others have emerged. These stages were responses to changing medical technology and to evolution of the urban area that affected site and area attractiveness, patient access, and need to be near other physicians and medical facilities. The loss of the CBD cluster may not be a unique feature of small SMSAs such as Bloomington-Normal.     

Digital Divides in New South Wales: A research note on socio-spatial inequality using 2001 Census data on computer and Internet technology

This paper examines social and spatial inequalities in personal usage of information technologies, drawing on data made available recently as part of Australia's national census, undertaken by the Bureau of Statistics in 2001. Data on both computer and Internet use are analysed in a number of ways: patterns of use and non-use of the technology are examined across New South Wales in relation to a number of variables, including age, place of birth, indigeneity, income and educational status. Selected results are mapped for State-wide trends and within Sydney, revealing spatial inequalities both across and among regions. Correlation and regression analysis are used to demonstrate the strength of association between computer and Internet use and other socio-economic variables. The results suggest that there is a strong class as well as spatial dimension to Australia's digital divides. Educational status and income mediate use of computers and Internet technologies, in addition to factors associated with location, indigeneity and birthplace. Such observations reinforce those made elsewhere regarding the uneven geometries of power apparent in information economies, and suggest interventions in public policy debates, particularly in the areas of telecommunications provision, resourcing of public schools, and regional economic development.     

Grandiose plans,but insignificant outcomes: the development of colonial ports at Twofold Bay,New South Wales

In the nineteenth century, a succession of claims was made that the ports of Twofold Bay, on the New South Wales South Coast, would contest Sydney's dominance. This paper examines the period between 1820 and 1920 to explain why the ports of Twofold Bay—Boydtown and Eden—never sustained their challenge to Sydney's economic hegemony. These small ports provide an interesting insight into the economic marginalisation of localities by the process of colonisation. Twofold Bay is examined within Rimmer's spatial model of port development. Uneven port development is examined as the geographical expression of several colonisation processes; firstly, the emergence of a port hierarchy (or dominance ranking); secondly, changes in the organisation of maritime space; and thirdly, improved internal accessibility.     

The Demise of Place Equity in Sydney's Economic Development Planning

The role of planning in Sydney's economic development since the mid-1970s is explored, focusing on its role in reducing spatial disparities across the region. Planning policies during the period of each State government--Labor (1976-88), Liberal-National (1988-95) and Labor (1995-present)--are reviewed. The paper analyses a hierarchy of factors underlying the relative failure of policies to lessen disparities, notably intra-government failure to produce effective policies, the influence of prevailing ideology, local institutions and political culture, and the wider context of globalisation and the mode of capitalist accumulation. Each of these has been significant in limiting planning's role in addressing uneven development across the region.     

Immigrant Concentration and Domestic Migrant Dispersal: Is Movement to Nonometropolitan Areas “White flight”?

This article examines linkages between recent domestic out-migration from immigrant gateway metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan migration gains, based on data of the 1990 census, 1996 Current Population Survey, and population estimates for the 1990–1996 period from the Bureau of Census. Our analysis of these data suggests that there is a mirror image of migration patterns between high immigration metropolitan area losses and nonmetropolitan area gains. This is especially evident in the West with the relationship between Los Angeles and San Francisco areas' losses on the one hand, and the region's nonmetropolitan gains on the other. While pre-elderly and elderly retirees have contributed to these nonmetropolitan gains, much of it is attributable to the destination choices of suburban-like populations—Whites with children, not college educated, and with lower incomes—that have been leaving high immigration metropolitan areas. This new, more dispersed form of “White flight” holds the potential for reinvigorating smaller, nonmetropolitan communities, but creating, as well, new demographic divisions across space.     

沈阳市部门企业地理集聚与城市结构

基于产业空间聚集分布情况探寻城市结构特征,是当前大都市区实证研究中的聚焦点所在,但由于方法论的限制而无法真正揭示产业地理集聚之间的内在关联性。基于已有研究基础,试图通过完善潜力模型、设置距离参数、结合主成分分析法实现对产业地理集聚测度方法论的完善与发展,并选取极具代表性大都市区核心城市——沈阳市为样本单元,以2008年的经济普查部门企业数据开展实证检验。结果表明：沈阳市部门企业之间除了交通运输、仓储和邮政中心产业属于地方化经济外,其余的均为企业关联;水利、环境和公共设施管理业产业依附于制造业呈临街抑或隔街集聚,而与公共管理和组织产业之间同街道集聚;支配主角之间,存在中心CBD主宰制造业的布局,而制造业又在很大程度上影响着交通运输、仓储和邮政中心的布局;企业地理集聚形成的城市结构依然是一个明显的“单中心圈层”结构,没有表现出“去中心化”抑或多极化或分散化演变趋势。研究成果与现实情况基本吻合,侧面说明该模式对揭示城市产业地理集聚模式以及由此形成的城市结构特征具有一定的解释力。     

THE GEOGRAPHY PLACEMENT SEMINAR: A COURSE SYLLABUS

This article examines linkages between recent domestic out-migration from immigrant gateway metropolitan areas and nonmetropolitan migration gains, based on data of the 1990 census, 1996 Current Population Survey, and population estimates for the 1990–1996 period from the Bureau of Census. Our analysis of these data suggests that there is a mirror image of migration patterns between high immigration metropolitan area losses and nonmetropolitan area gains. This is especially evident in the West with the relationship between Los Angeles and San Francisco areas' losses on the one hand, and the region's nonmetropolitan gains on the other. While pre-elderly and elderly retirees have contributed to these nonmetropolitan gains, much of it is attributable to the destination choices of suburban-like populations—Whites with children, not college educated, and with lower incomes—that have been leaving high immigration metropolitan areas. This new, more dispersed form of “White flight” holds the potential for reinvigorating smaller, nonmetropolitan communities, but creating, as well, new demographic divisions across space.     

改革开放以来我国城市地域结构演变与持续发展研究--以南京都市区为例

研究改革开放以来我国城市地域结构空间重组的基本特征,指出除少数高科技产业健康发展的内陆城市外,我国城市原有格局将长期存在,在此基础上分析了南京都市区内部地域结构特征,存在的问题并提出了解决途径。     

PATTERNS OF SPATIAL DISPERSION IN METROPOLITAN COMMUTING

The simultaneous impact of residential and employment decentralization in the form of multinucleations on patterns of commuting concentration and dispersion is examined for the Washington metropolitan area with 1980 data. Because of the area's generally white-collar labor force, the impact of segregated occupational groups is minimized and it is possible to examine strictly the spatial dimensions of commuting dispersion. Commuting becomes increasingly more dispersed from the center of the area to about 12 miles outward. Beyond that point, the patterns of commuting become considerably more complex, responding to a wide range of sizes of employment in a widely dispersed pattern of nucleations. In some sectors, commuting dispersion remains somewhat constant. In one sector, commuting patterns revert to some level of concentration, possibly responding to a somewhat unique situation of employment concentration along a corridor. These findings contribute to the recognition that tomorrow's transit structure cannot rely on its traditional form, but must become more selective.     

HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND SOCIAL STABILITY IN SACRAMENTO'S OLD CITY

Sacramento’s Old City contains the CBD of a metropolitan area of 1.5 million people and adjacent residential neighborhoods housing 32,000 people. This essay reviews the evolving social character of the Old City, which has been the subject of substantial preservation efforts since 1960. Survey questionnaires sent to members of the Sacramento Old City Association (SOCA) in 1977 and 1992 reveal continuity in most characteristics and attitudes. Although SOCA is a largely white and upper-income organization, and although SOCA’s main policy thrust is to preserve the single-family housing stock of the Old City, the record of neighborhood social change over the past two decades shows limited gentrification and enduring economic, ethnic, and life-style diversity. Characteristics of the metropolitan area and of the locality-its inherited land-use patterns and building stock, traffic, and indistinct residential image-work against gentrification. The Old City continues as a physically and socially eclectic place, in contrast to more thoroughly gentrified central neighborhoods in other, larger and more globally oriented, American cities.