Suburbanizing Disadvantage in Australian Cities: Sociospatial Change in an Era of Neoliberalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article analyses the shifting locations of social disadvantage in Australian cities based on data from the 1986 and 2006 censuses with Sydney as a case example. This 20-year period is highly significant because it represents the period over which the impacts of neoliberal economic policies introduced by the Federal Labor government in 1986, and maintained by successive Australian governments regardless of party, have fed through the Australian economy with a resulting increase in socioeconomic restructuring, including increased income polarization. This in turn has been reflected in a highly distinctive locational shift in concentrations of disadvantage in Australian cities as housing markets, largely left to their own devices (albeit supported by taxation and subsidy arrangements), have acted to realign the social structure of the city. The net result has been a marked suburbanization of the locations of disadvantage away from the “traditional” inner cities and into the middle, and in some cases outer, suburbs. In many respects, the locations identified are analogous to the first suburbs of U.S. cities that are now the focus of urban policy concerns. The article explores the impact of the “neoliberal turn” on the changing spatial structure of the Australian city and provides evidence of the changing nature of urban disadvantage in the postindustrial and increasingly fragmenting Australian city. In doing so, the article touches on the emergence of new geographies of underprivilege.