Abstract
The study examines the critical, but frequently overlooked, role of real estate intermediation in responding to demographic diversity within the organised production of Melbourne’s growth area suburbs. We examined 114 on-site billboards and 38 active residential development sites in the City of Wyndham, one of the most rapidly expanding suburban municipalities in Australia. Our findings underscore the ways real estate intermediation enchants an imagined suburban lifestyle through systematic marketing of community, amenity, and place. In-situ billboards serve as ‘technologies of enchantment’, promoting an Australian housing dream that is less closely associated with individual housing units, but obscures much of the poor social, environmental, and housing outcomes of suburbanisation. Instead, suburbs are presented as a blank canvas for new migrant homebuyers to exercise agency in consuming culture and building community. The study thus highlights the crucial role real estate intermediation plays in the production of future ethnoburbs in the urban fringes. We call for critical scrutiny of the specific use of visual resources that normalise suburban sprawl and substandard housing production by ingraining specific lifestyle imaginations in the Australian public psyche.
Published Version
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