Featured Graphic. Intraregional Household Moves in Sydney

Abstract

Between the census nights of 2006 and 2011 at least 360 000 households (24% of the total) moved location at least once within the Sydney metropolitan area. Although this understates the totality of moves during the period (because of omitting both multiple moves and moves into the city from elsewhere), the geography of the census-enumerated intraSydney moves sheds light on the spatial character of a city’s housing-market operation. Structuring household, rather than population, mobility has been made possible through the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Table builder resource. The geographic unit used is the ABS Statistical Area 2 (SA2)—the smallest unit that mobility data can be derived, representing between 2000 and 15 000 households. One of the most notable aspects of this representation is the extent of interplay between locations. Such interplay forms the lifeblood driving housing markets. Overall, whilst only a handful of locations appear to exist as points of destination, even fewer represent absolute points of origin. Although some household flows terminate in locations of predominant new supply (represented as graduated grey circles) many of these are themselves points of origin for reciprocal moves. Further to this, given Sydney’s role as a gateway city for upwards of 40% of Australia’s international migrant intake, the paucity of ‘migrant origin locations’ is particularly striking. Everywhere may be related to everywhere else, but local relationships are stronger. The spatially concentrated nature of such patterns is further emphasised by the boundaries shown. These have been identified using a GraphRecap (Guo, 2009) methodology to locate groups of SA2s containing flows of common origins and destinations [see Tice (2013) for details]. Visually, eighteen areas are identified. Whilst some are intermeshed within broader, city-scale, assemblages others are disconnected. Highlighting differing areas of connectivity can serve to focus research on the drivers (spatial or otherwise) influencing such visual facets. Further research opportunities exist through the profiling of these flows. The geography of housing-market pathways or careers become candidates for locating within a city’s spatial housing market structure. Further, the forthcoming release of the ABS 5% longitudinal Census dataset (SCLD), also at the SA2 level, promises the capacity to consider previous and current housing profiles. The ability to visually comprehend the networks in which such decisions are actualised may facilitate a further analytic approach. Flows joined and visualisation processed in QGIS 1.9/2.0.