NEW PATTERNS OF URBAN AND REGIONAL-DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA - DEMOGRAPHIC RESTRUCTURING AND ECONOMIC-CHANGE

Up to the early 1970s Australian urban history was generally considered to be distinctively different from that of North American or European countries. Since then, however, economic restructuring and demographic change have contributed to changes within urban and regional systems which have stimulated extensive commentary and debate. The first objective of this paper is to assess whether the dynamics of Australian urban and regional change are increasingly resembling those of other advanced capitalist nations, as all are subject increasingly to global forces of change. One theme in Australian debates has been the notion that there has been an urban-rural turnaround, or counter-urbanization, which is changing the relative balance of the building blocks of the Australian urban and regional system. A second objective has been to respond to this thesis. The analysis of census data on population change is used as evidence for the argument that there are significant differences between processes of change in the Australian urban/regional system and experience in North America and Europe. It is also argued that the counter-urbanization thesis is flawed conceptually, but that there has been significant restructuring of the Australian urban and regional system, which is increasingly dominated by three sprawling conurbations and a rapidly growing and extensive coastal zone of consumption centres and suburban development. These developments have implications both for our understanding of the overall dynamics of urban and regional change in Australia and also for some local political debates over consumption issues.