The growth
industries and professions of the future will shape our cities in very
different ways to the industries and professions that shaped our cities in the
past. There are profound implications for urban planning and property, if we’re
ready for them
The biggest growth industry for coming years and for
the foreseeable future, the official forecasts all seem to agree on, will be in
health care and social assistance. This includes professions from surgeons to
GPs to nurses to child care or aged care, various therapies and counsellors,
dental, and even laundry workers, cleaners and administrative support roles.
Already our biggest single industry, it employs more than 1.5 million
Australians. It grew by over 20% in the five years to 2015 and that rate of growth
is unlikely to change going forward. Nearly half of everyone in this industry
has a bachelor’s degree or some higher education qualification so they’re not
all hospital cleaners – many will be skilled professionals.
This will be followed by the professional, scientific
and technical services industry and very close behind that, the education and
training industry. Construction, manufacturing (yes, still growing despite all
attempts to kill it off) and accommodation and food services round up the top
six biggest growth industries of the future.
This is important because the nature of growth industries
of the future - and more particularly where they will be located - is going to
reshape our cities in a very different way to the industries that grew with and
shaped our cities in the past. This was highlighted in a recent report
on employment in the growing region of South East Queensland, prepared by
Macroplan for The Suburban Alliance.
The health care and social assistance industry is
predicted by government authorities to grow more than any other industry in the
years to 2041, producing around 220,000 extra jobs. But this industry has very
different spatial needs to, say, the legal industry which has the highest inner
city concentration of any occupation in the region. In health and social
assistance, 200,000 of those 220,000 jobs will likely be in suburban business
districts or otherwise scattered across suburbia. The biggest growth industry
has little need or preference for clustering in the inner city.
Consider the implications for transport networks,
property development and urban planning. What will it mean in terms of
additional medical centres, hospitals, professional and consulting suites, new
aged care and child care, and all the peripheral jobs that hang off these
occupations? Where will they go? Will we see existing shopping centres morph
from a largely retail focused offer to embrace a wider range of mixed uses? And
if not in existing centres, what planning changes will be needed to accommodate
this growth in new centres?
Our urban model, reflecting a 100 years of employment centralization,
is changing to one of employment dispersal. Jobs are not moving from the city
centre to the suburbs but the industries which fuel growth are changing, and
with them, the patterns of employment location.
Even in the professional, scientific and technical
services industry – one you would presume is largely centralized - much of that
future growth (based on current spatial preferences) will occur outside the
inner city. Take for example the generically titled occupation of “professional.”
There were 284,300 of these in the South-East Queensland region but only 24% of
them in the inner city. A further quarter were in a number of defined suburban
business districts and the balance – half – elsewhere in suburbia. This is our
second biggest growth industry and those patterns of employment distribution
are unlikely to change meaning of the 146,000 new jobs in this industry to be
created to 2041, the clear majority will likely be suburban based.
The third biggest growth industry (education) also
shows little evidence of centralization – only 7% of educators are inner city
workers the rest are suburban. Even of those professionals who describe their
occupation as “Chief executives, general managers or legislators” delivers a
surprise: there are only 21% of them in the inner city. And for clerical and
administrative workers, it’s a similar picture: only 22% are inner city
workers. The rest are suburbia based.
Engineers appear to have a preference for central
locations with 42% of the 16,639 engineers of South East Queensland in the
inner city as do the lawyers with 65% of them in the entire region to be found
in the inner city. But there are only (fortunately?) just over 9,000 lawyers in
the entire region so unless there’s to be an unpredicted explosion of work in
the legal profession in the future it’s hard to see this occupation fueling demand
for space and transport in the inner city of the future.
Fifty years ago, cities were full of clerical and
administrative, managerial and professional workers, shuffling in to centralized
offices in their cars or on trams, trains or buses to clock on at 9am and clock
off at 5pm. The suburbs were centres of manufacturing and heavy industry, and
retailing, wholesaling and transit related industries. That pattern is still
there but in another fifty years’ time, our cities will have different
industries generating the bulk of jobs and many of those jobs will need to be
based in suburban centres to be closer to their markets or regional transport
arteries.
And what are the implications for our city centres? Will
they continue to evolve to embrace yet more entertainment, recreational and culture
based hubs for the regions they serve, rather than largely just places of work?
And how will different cities behave, given the economic drivers can be so
substantially different?
There’s much more to be explored in this because the
implications are profound. Sadly, much of our thinking around urban planning seems
firmly rooted in traditional models which owe more to a sentimental rear vision
view of urban development rather than a forward looking one.
Footnote:
If you or your organization is interested in exploring what this means in more
detail, or for specific regions, please just drop me an email. I’d be very
interested to discuss this with you. I’ve got a useful presentation which runs
through all this in a bit more detail which I’d be happy to share. You can download the entire report prepared for The Suburban Alliance here.
