Learning from Levittown

Attend any number of presentations on the subject of “sprawl” or read any number of articles denouncing it, and very often you’ll find the example of Levittown USA being used as a case study in what not to do. The 1950s era mass-produced housing development has been pilloried by designers, new urbanists, smart growthers and creative classists from the US to Europe to Australia. Admittedly, its design when first completed was far from inspiring. But the critics omit to mention some very important and enduring features of Levittown, some of which we could use more of today.

Figure 1 Levittown USA in the 1950s

What is Levittown? It’s the name given to a number of post World War II housing developments in New York and Pennsylvania. Developers the Levitt family sought to provide low cost detached housing, especially for servicemen returning from WWII and their families. Houses were manufactured using a Henry Ford assembly line approach, with construction teams devoted to particular components, allowing for an entire house to be built in as little as a single day. Houses with land came with appliances installed, lawns and of course a white picket fence. They sold like hotcakes.

Largely uniform designs on low cost land with efficient building techniques were the keys to making these homes affordable. Keep in mind, many residents were escaping cramped, unhealthy and relatively expensive rented accommodation in New York urban tenements. For them, the hope offered by a new home they could afford to own, with space around them, was a no contest compared with the lifestyles they and their parents’ generations had known.

Figure 2 Urban living was a dystopian nightmare for residents of New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Cramped housing, disease, crime - all were rampant.

Figure 3 The opportunity to own their own home, with internal room and external space, free from the conditions they and their parents had experienced, made Levittown an obvious and logical choice.

But for urban design critics at the time, Levittown represented everything they detested. The writer and urban critic Lewis Mumford had this to say in his 1961 booked “The City in History”:

“…a multitude of uniform and unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every respect to a common mould.”

That set in train a repeating pattern of criticism over the decades that followed, all of which seems to have two things in common: first, the criticism is based on initial design (making next to no mention of the improved housing conditions it provided, liberating a generation of families, nor the affordable prices at which it could be purchased). Second, the criticism reflects mainly the early days of Levittown. Indeed, the opening photo in this article is the one I have seen used most in articles and at conferences where scorn is freely piled upon Levittown. The image is 70 years old people! Why not use a recent image to show what Levittown looks like today? Here’s one below for example -  which looks very much like any middle-class suburban environment anywhere. Criticising projects like Levittown in their very early days is a bit like criticising a 2 year old for their lack of literacy and numeracy skills. Give it a rest.  

Figure 4 Levittown today looks more like a bucolic scene of middle class suburban life.

Below is another image. Over time, owners have planted trees, the area has matured, schools filled, community facilities established, and transit connections improved. In fact, the demographic profile of Levittown today is that of a healthy middle class, middle income, well educated community with very high levels of home ownership (much higher than the Australian average).

Figure 5 A matured Levittown community that the suburb bashers never talk about

Levittown on opening day may not have been the most visually appealing landscape imaginable, but to the people who bought and settled there, they could no doubt see beyond the narrow view of wealthy urban critics like Mumford. They could see a future for their families and a lifestyle free from cramped and run-down housing, disease and urban crime.

Have we learned anything from Levittown? It doesn’t look that way. The prevailing view of new suburban master planned communities today has changed little from the ill-informed, jaundiced and smug denunciations levelled at Levittown. New suburban communities are regarded by the inner urban cognoscenti as some form of social aberration. This, they claim, is a condition that needs curing. This can’t possibly be what people want. It can’t possibly be good for them.

There are many modern-day versions of Lewis Mumford in Australia, generating a steady torrent of suburban disdain like this from Sydney Morning Herald urbanist and university professor Elizabeth Farrelly:

“The suburbs are about boredom, and obviously some people like being bored and plain and predictable, I’m happy for them … even if their suburbs are destroying the world.”

New suburban communities are wrongly accused of generating city bound congestion (though fewer than 10% of residents work in the inner city); they are accused of being environmentally irresponsible (yet they provide public open space and parkland at many times the levels available in inner cities); they are accused of being wasteful energy guzzlers (yet they are more likely to generate their own rooftop solar and dry their clothes without the aid of an electric dryer using instead the common clothesline); they are accused of consuming valuable farmland (though it is often marginal and the accusers have little understanding of farming realities); they are accused of catering for poorly educated, low income, fast food guzzling masses (though the demographic picture provided by the Census shows this to be entirely untrue); and they are accused of creating social isolation, loneliness and ill health (which even the most tortured methodology in the hands of the most ardent suburb hater couldn’t come close to proving).

Unattributed, unscientific, hearsay is accepted “wisdom” in so many circles that it is easy to despair. Evidence is out the window and in its place are unchallenged but fashionable belief systems. Faith over facts. It’s as if we are sick with urban prejudice but are only being able to choose between the witchdoctor, the anti-vaccer or the Chinese herbalist for remedies.

New suburban communities have much to offer Australia. If we simply sought to understand them better, we might begin to support them better too. Affordable housing in new suburban communities is surely an option people are entitled to aspire to? How many really aspire to a permanent life of renting in cramped conditions?

Levittown was popular with working and middle class Americans in post war America. It provided low cost homes and a better future for its residents, who busily went about planting trees and building their own community over time. It provided a start. 

New suburban developments deserve the same opportunity to provide these things to a generation of Australians. They can do without the moral guidance, partisan bias or professional snobbery of “experts” or the opinions of the inner urban cabal who wax lyrical on the need for affordable or social housing yet in the next breath reject models which could provide it.

The Suburban Alliance has commissioned some indepedent research into what mature masterplanned communities are really like, compared with the inner city. The report and two minute video summaries can be found here: https://suburbanalliance.com.au/causes/a-new-suburbia-case-studies-of-successful-suburban-expansion/

A new geography of urban wealth?

US based urbanist Richard Florida - once described as an “intellectual Rockstar” – shot to fame with his 2002 book The Creative Class. He was on a global speaking tour that took in many Australian cities, arguing that the secrets to economic development lay in attracting legions of creatively motivated progressives working in new economy professions. This was best done by enhancing inner urban “hipsterness” measured by a “bohemian index” with investments in public space, recreation, culture, and various other “urban chic” accoutrements. Many city leaders rushed for the Florida gospel, applying its preaching in the hope of out-hipping competing urban centres for precious jobs in the new economy. 

But Florida has since re-canted, admitting that the focus on inner urban “cool” may have worked for the wealthy and privileged but at the same time created city wide disadvantage. His latest book The New Urban Crisis suggests an alarming wealth divide is opening up between inner urban and suburban landscapes.

“Across nearly every metro area, middle-class neighborhoods are disappearing. Our cities and suburbs are being replaced by a patchwork metropolis, in which small areas of privilege are surrounded by vast swaths of poverty and disadvantage.  The rise of a winner-take-all-urbanism, with a small group of winners and a much larger span of losers, signals a profound crisis of today’s urbanized knowledge economy that threatens our economic future and way of life,” he now says. Talk about a change of heart.

While much of this may be true for major cities in the USA (where hipster havens like San Francisco or New York are losing millennials to lower cost of living centres in flyover country) is it also true for Australian cities? Are we seeing a concentration of wealth in inner urban suburbs while suburban areas languish? Certainly, the infrastructure and policy focus in most Australian cities has, for the past 15 years, been very much on enhanced inner urban amenity. But has this been enough to draw more high-income residents to the inner city and cause professionals to abandon the suburbs?

The evidence is revealing. Here’s a quick wrap of the picture across Australia’s capitals as of the 2016 Census.

Brisbane.

The household income difference between inner urban residents of Brisbane and those of the wider metro area have widened in the 2006-2016 period. Over that ten years, inner city residents (roughly within a 5 kilometre radius) have gone from enjoying incomes that were on average 13% higher than the wider metro average to now 23% more than the metro average. In dollar terms, inner Brisbane households earn on average $357 a week more than the metro average for the city.

However, the traditional patchwork quilt of high and low income suburbs remains a dominant feature. The suburb you live in still tends to define your household wealth status – be it high or low. Brisbane’s western suburbs (Fig Tree Pocket, Pinjarra Hills, Brookfield etc) are still among the highest income earners. South eastern suburbs (Carindale, Wakerley, Rochedale) are fast catching up. There are inner suburbs on the high income list (Bardon, Paddington, Bulimba etc) but there are others (like Kelvin Grove or Herston) which are well below the city wide average.

So while it is true the inner city is gentrifying, the preference among many high income households still appears to be for traditional suburban neighborhoods, many in middle to outer urban areas.

Sydney

Sydney is different. In 2006, household incomes in the Sydney city and inner south region were roughly the same as the wider metro average. By 2016 they were only 8% more. The North Sydney-Mossman inner city region actually went from being 56% more than the metro average to 37% more by 2016, while the Eastern suburbs north region stayed roughly the same – from 37% more to 38% more ten years later.

In dollar terms however, the differences are more stark: the average North Sydney-Mossman household in 2016 was pulling in $642 a week more than the metro average; and it was $667 a week more in the Eastern suburbs North.

So inner city residents of Sydney earn a lot more than the metro average in both dollar and percentage terms but it’s been that way for some time – hardly any surprise. This is entirely consistent with Sydney’s long term role as financial and business centre for Australia, which has arguably been the case for some decades now. Research would need to look back to the 1990s or earlier to find a turning point where inner urban income disparity began to widen significantly from the metro wide average – if indeed it did (or has it been so since the 1960s?)

However, proximity to the core does not preclude a number of middle and outer suburbs from joining the high income household list. Rouse Hill to the north west or Port Hacking to the south are two of several examples. In Sydney’s case, proximity to the core appears to have a significant relationship to high income households, but this has probably been the case since long before Florida published his first book.

Melbourne.

The household income gap in inner Melbourne compared with the greater Melbourne average widened from 5% more in 2006 to 10% more in 2016. The difference was greater in the Melbourne inner east area (14% more in 2016) but this was unchanged since 2006 (when it was 15%). In dollar terms, inner Melbourne households earn $155 more than the metro wide average and this rises to $213 a week more for the smaller Melbourne inner east area.

Overall, despite a widely reported acceleration of urban density programs in inner Melbourne over the past decade, this appears to have little impact on widening income disparity. In fact, it is possible to argue that Melbourne is more equitable in terms of inner urban versus wider metro household incomes than any other capital.

Melbourne also continues to exhibit a preference among high income households for a large number of middle and outer suburban areas. Any suggestion that high income professionals in Melbourne have abandoned the burbs for the inner city is not supported by the evidence.

Adelaide.

Households in Adelaide’s inner city (essentially its CBD) earned roughly 1% less than the metro average for the city in 2016 – which was down from 11% more in 2006. However, inner urban pockets such as Burnside inner (36% more in 2016) or Prospect-Walkerville (27% more in 2016) showed more disparity - but these differences seem for the most part unchanged since 2006 (when Burnside inner was 32% higher than the metro average and Prospect-Walkerville 19%).

So suburbs immediately adjoining the inner urban core of Adelaide appear to show more income differential compared with the metro average than the core itself, and these differences – 36% more in the case of Burnside – are substantial. But like Sydney, it would seem that this has been the case for at least the period since 2006 and there is no strong evidence of a widening income gap between inner and broader metro Adelaide - where the Adelaide Hills and foothills continue to be the preferred (suburban) environment for higher income households.

Perth

The gap between inner city household incomes and the wider metro area in Perth are widening – rising from 13% more in inner Perth in 2006 to 24% more in 2016. In dollar terms, inner city Perth households are now earning on average $386 a week more than the metro average for the city. At the time of the Census (August 2016) Perth was in the midst of a downturn in economic fortunes linked to the slowing resources sector.

You could speculate whether this had greater financial impact on inner urban or middle and outer urban households but without further study, this remains a topic of conjecture. For now at least, it remains the beachside suburbs north of the city that are home to the higher income households, much as it has long been.

So, what’s this all mean?

First, the Australian evidence runs contrary to suggestions that higher income professionals are abandoning the suburbs for “cooler, inner urban hipster” markets. Indeed, middle and suburban locations are where you are just as likely to find pockets of high income earning households (with the possible exception of Sydney where wealth does some more concentrated). The same, of course also applies to low income households but the point being that proximity to the core is not yet a key determinant for most cities – at least on the evidence. Larger homes and leafier environs remain for many a more powerful lure than higher density inner urban environments. There is evidence this may be changing and the gap widening, but the pace of change is not what some boosters have suggested. The suburbs have certainly not fallen from favour and remain very much desirable in the eyes of the higher income households that many inner urban markets covet.

It’s also fair to suggest that the income and wealth disparity Florida is now alerted to in cities like San Francisco and New York is of a scale that we are yet to see in Australian cities (again with the possible exception of Sydney). The enhancement of urban cores in many Australian city centres as so far mostly been insufficient to lure legions of high income creative class workers into those cores as places to live. Some will argue by pointing to anecdotal evidence (much of it owed to gushy headlines manufactured by eager boosters) but on the whole, Australian cities have avoided the problems that Florida now warns about.

For the time being at least.

Footnote: The maps used in this story came from a handy online tool published by The Guardian. You can have your own fun via this link.

Why we need more Springfields

Australia’s worsening housing affordability problem is a largely self-inflicted: we first restrict and then tax the supply of new land needed to accommodate people, while at the same time accelerating population growth and then compounding the problem by applauding as most of that growth is focussed on just two or three cities. There are official policies in many States that encourage a concentration of both jobs and housing in finite inner city areas – which can only exacerbate an already chronic problem.

It’s not just housing affordability that is the problem, although this gets much of the attention. The entire point of inner urban renewal in the first place – dating back to the Better Cities program of the Hawke-Keating Government – was to harness spare capacity in inner urban areas through selective infrastructure upgrades.  We wanted to avoid the ‘donut effect’ common in US cities at the time, where inner urban areas were hollowed out leaving behind empty schools and other underutilized community assets. The opposite is now the reality: urban infrastructure is not keeping pace with population growth. We are in the throes of committing tens of billions more of taxpayer dollars to invest in inner urban infrastructure from schools to public transport in the Sisyphean belief that this can be fixed, while we continue to pump yet more people into limited spaces.

You wonder why we are so slow to identify problems and grasp solutions in this country. As Donald Horne wryly observed way back in 1964, “'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck." Those second rate people are still there driving public policy but our luck may be running out in terms of housing affordability and urban infrastructure unless there is some change of direction.

Part of the answer is, as always, under our noses even if we refuse to acknowledge it. The Springfield master planned community in South East Queensland this year celebrates a 25 year anniversary since its first humble housing lots were released. Occupying over 7,000 acres (2,860 hectares) it has clocked up some $13.6 billion in project investment to date, from housing for some 34,000 residents to education (including a University) to health (including a new hospital) to recreation, shops, aged care, industrial, offices, private and public transport connections.  That $13.6 billion investment to date is predicted to reach $85 billion on completion, by which stage there will be over 2 million square metres of mixed use space in its town centre and a population of 138,000 people.

Of critical importance is that the $13.6 billion investment to date is a multiple of many times the amount of Government support the project has received. In an era where ‘nation building’ or ‘city transforming’ infrastructure projects struggle to achieve much better than a 1:1 cost benefit ratio (and where massive leaps of faith in expert predictions are usually required to get them there) the Springfield example needs no such empirical gymnastics. The evidence in this project is that every dollar of government support spent there generates many multiples in private investment, and builds a complete community in the process. This is not just a dormitory development, but one which aims at generating its own employment from trades to highly skilled technical workers and everything in between.

Springfield is also a model of community development that has been quietly (and sometimes publicly) derided by advocates of increasing inner urban concentration.  It fits what some would pejoratively denounce as ‘sprawl’.  Everything here is new. Though obviously very popular with residents (otherwise they wouldn’t be living here) it doesn’t conform with the approved group-think which attaches great virtue to old world urban models reliant on foreign cities like Copenhagen or Paris for their inspiration – many of them first laid out in the medieval period.  Being new and suburban is heresy to much of the new urbanist and smart growth faiths that seek to recycle established communities into ever higher density communities.

Density for some has become the end in itself, not the means to an end. Despite the mounting evidence of worsening affordability, increasing congestion, a growing wealth divide between inner urban residents and the rest, the problems of lagging and prohibitively expensive infrastructure to support higher inner urban densities, mounting lists of projects which struggle to achieve even a marginally credible 1:1 cost benefit ratio – proponents continue to defy the evidence in pursuit of their faith.

Yet Springfield offers more than a solution to our emerging urban crisis: it also offers the business model. The experience gained in developing this community to this stage should, logically, be embraced by policy makers the country over. We should apply our minds to how this was achieved with only equivocal public policy support (at the time) and limited public funds, and imagine what could be achieved with just a little more of both. Interpreting, studying and then applying this model of urban development as part of a solution designed to alleviate excess pressure on just a few urban centres isn’t just an idea, it’s a hugely compelling one.

Much of what has been achieved in the name of “urban renewal” in Australia has been exemplary but increasingly the signs are that excessive concentrations of employment and housing in narrowly demarcated inner city areas are counterproductive. The opportunity to use the Springfield model of urban development to house an increasingly bigger Australia is one that deserves to be explored, and sites identified for many more Springfields to emerge in the future. The peripheries of those cities where worsening affordability and excessive congestion are just two painfully obvious signs of policy and market lag are the places to start looking. 

What really makes cities liveable?

So called city liveability rankings are proliferating like rabbits before Myxomatosis. And like rabbits, they can be pest. A couple of recent liveability surveys beggar belief, not just in their method but also their conclusions. Here’s what’s wrong with them, and some ideas for alternative measures of city liveability.

In August this year, that journal of inner city indulgence The Sydney Morning Herald published a front page story boldly declaring “Sydney’s ten most liveable suburbs revealed.” Attention grabbing headline? Tick. Rigorous methodology? Fail. In fairness the study wasn’t by the SMH but a research consultancy, whose approach to assessing what is liveable and what isn’t says a lot about how some in our community are becoming besotted with wealth and privilege at the expense of opportunity and equity.

If you think that’s harsh, first consider their top ten, and where they are:

Sydney's top 10 most liveable suburbs

Rank	Suburb	Region
1	Lavender Bay	Lower north shore
2	Milsons Point	Lower north shore
3	McMahons Point	Lower north shore
4	Kirribilli	Lower north shore
5	Waverton	Lower north shore
6	Wollstonecraft	Lower north shore
7	North Sydney	Lower north shore
8	Millers Point	City and east
9	Elizabeth Bay	City and east
10	Darling Point	City and east

Yes, it’s a list of Sydney’s most expensive suburbs, all of them inner city.

In a remarkably narrow methodology, the researchers assessed liveability on 16 qualities which are most commonly found in inner city areas where high real estate prices prevail and where wealthier members of the community tend to live. Talk about confirmation bias.

The criteria included: access to employment (the nearby CBD employs a lot of very highly paid people); being close to light rail and trains (most concentrated in the inner city and “essential” they claim for any functional modern city); bus stops (fair enough); ferry access (limited to being close to water which is also where the high priced real estate is); culture (being close to theatres, museums and art galleries – most of which are centralised in downtowns, meaning inner city locations are bound to win); main road congestion (the further from slow moving traffic the better, but inner city residents working in the CBD have less of this problem); education (agreed - the more primary and high schools the better, and the closer the better); shopping (fair enough to a point); open space (agreed); tree cover (nothing quite like those leafy inner city suburbs with the spreading old  deciduous trees imported from the UK); topographic variation (hills are great for expansive views and also high priced real estate); cafes and restaurants (I kid you not, this is word for word: “Access to a decent short black and a sushi train should be a no-brainer.” Yep, they’ve nailed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with that one); crime (obviously best avoided); telecommunications (“We’ve come to expect five bars and speedy broadband at all times and this has never been truer than in today’s world of Pokemon Go and Netflix”- so they obviously have life’s priorities sorted); views (“The more water views – whether it’s of the harbour, a bay or the ocean – the better”); beach access (well of course, life’s a beach in a multi-million dollar home with harbour views and beach access).

Stunning isn’t it? According to this survey, liveability equates with the lifestyles of the Sydney rich and famous. The rest of you mug punters can only watch on in envy. The higher social order has, like some twist on The Hunger Games, spoken.

Another equally vapid survey is by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Their latest world survey concluded that Melbourne was the world’s most liveable city. Their league ladder was as follows:

	Rank	Rating
Melbourne	1	97.5
Vienna	2	97.4
Vancouver	3	97.3
Toronto	4	97.2
Calgary	5	96.6
Adelaide	5	96.6
Perth	7	95.9

You can read about their criteria here but it will be obvious to many of you that, like the survey lauded in the Sydney Morning Herald, there’s a preference for cities where wealth and privilege rule (except Adelaide, whose presence on this list given its failed economy is anyone’s guess). Vancouver, for example, is among the world’s least affordable cities but that’s obviously not a liveability problem if you are in the minority for whom that isn’t an issue.  

So what’s missing from these sybaritic surveys of liveability? And what should we be thinking more about? My suggestions are follows:

Affordability. The elephant in all the rooms is housing affordability. How can a city be liveable if that definition really only applies to a minority of the population on the highest incomes or with the greatest wealth? That housing affordability, and the cost of living generally, should so easily be overlooked in measures of city liveability is an indictment on much that passes for urban policy and the thinking that goes with it.

Housing choice. Cities that offer their citizens housing choice, by type and location, surely fair better as more liveable than ones that dictate the form and location of housing by decree? This applies as much to ensuring young people have access to types of housing that suit their needs, and equally for seniors, who are too often shunted out of the areas they grew up in because housing types are locked in stone to uses and a society whose era has long since passed.

Dispersed employment. Highly centralised city economies force more of their residents into longer commutes, which tend to be more costly for those on lesser incomes than the more generous incomes earned by inner city residents. Encouraging employment centres to disperse so that opportunities for work are closer to where more people live is a liveability angle that deserves recognition.

Full or close to full employment. Immunity from unemployment or the risk of it is more likely to be found amongst residents who already enjoy a degree of economic privilege by way of education or otherwise. Lesser skilled city residents are less likely to find quick transitions into new or different jobs so a city with full or near full employment ought to be regarded as more liveable than one where strong employment and ongoing certainty is confined to a minority.

Equal access to economic opportunity. Equality of opportunity is different to equality of outcomes. Cities that offer their residents broadly equivalent opportunities for education, employment, and advancement ought in my view to be considered more liveable than those where inherited wealth or opportunity are the norm. This is different to equality of outcomes – if residents have opportunities and they don’t pursue them or squander them, that is their responsibility at the end of the day.

Tolerant and rational. Free speech and a tolerant, rational approach to social issues is a precursor to liveability, surely? The antithesis of this is residents fearing to speak their mind or venture their opinions. There seems an increasing tendency for self-appointed and unelected urban cognoscenti to dismiss or talk down to others, which is disappointing. The next step on that path is censorship – something no liveable city should tolerate.

Clean and unpolluted. This should go without saying but a city that pollutes its own waterways, skies, or open space isn’t as liveable as one that doesn’t.

Shared benefits. Cities which spread the benefits of their urban infrastructure improvements throughout the metropolitan area are logically more equitable than those that focus all their energies on inner urban domains. If residents in outer metropolitan areas are denied access to transport improvements, open space, schools or other forms of infrastructure because the budget’s been spent downtown, that’s not what I call a formula for liveability.

Innovative and enterprising. Not sure how you could measure this, but I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the support for new ideas as opposed to old established formulas and traditions. Starts ups are the KPI of an innovative economy but how to encourage and facilitate more of this is something we are yet to learn. Unless the answer lies somewhere in the suggestions above?

There are many more suggestions I could add but none would promote the idea that liveability is best measured by some connection to high priced real estate in a limited number of areas enjoyed by a limited number of people. Cities are as much suburban as inner urban and measures of liveability need to recognise the broader measures of what makes life in cities most enjoyable, wherever you live and whatever your income or lifestyle.

Why urbanisation is mostly a suburban phenomenon.

The world is rapidly urbanizing. The United Nations estimates that sometime around 2008, half the world’s population was urban, for the first time in human history. They estimate that by 2050 nearly two thirds of the world’s developing nation populations will be urban, while for the developed world, the figure will be a massive 86%. Australia fits this picture perfectly: some 80% of our population already lives in our major cities and half live in the three largest. But what’s not widely understood is that on both the global level and the Australian scale, this urban growth has been a suburban phenomenon.

This reality may come as a surprise to many and the cause might be in semantics. The term ‘urban’ has fallen into common use to describe higher density, inner city areas, while ‘suburban’ has typically been used to describe outlying areas of predominantly low density development (primarily housing). But when global statistics about urbanization are quoted, the meaning covers both inner and outer urban areas. Suburban is, after all, a subset of ‘urban.’

According to the MIT Center forAdvanced Urbanism: “While statistics demonstrate that the amount of the world population in metropolitan areas is rapidly increasing, rarely is it understood that the bulk of this growth occurs in the suburbanized peripheries of cities. Domestically, over 69% of all U.S. residents live in suburban areas; internationally, many other developed countries are predominately suburban, while many developing countries are rapidly suburbanizing as well… Suburbanization is a contemporary global phenomenon.”

The same is true for Australian cities. In terms of where we urbanized Aussies call home, for the vast majority it is suburbia. In Sydney for example, the proportion of people living within the prized 5 kilometre ring of the CBD is just 8%. A further 16% live between 5 and 10 kilometres from the CBD, a third live between 10 and 20 kilometres from  the CBD and 43% of people live beyond 20 kilometres from the CBD. Those proportions are broadly the same for other major capitals.  Rates of growth are similarly skewed to suburbia: despite some high rates of intense growth in inner areas, the broader metropolitan framework of our major cities continues to carry the bulk of the population growth workload.

What comes as an even greater surprise to many is that the bulk of jobs in our large metro regions are also suburban by location. The CBDs of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne account for 13%, 13% and 10% respectively of all jobs in their metropolitan areas. Adding in city fringe areas lifts this proportion to 19%, 15% and 14% respectively. This is an economic reality borne out by the Census but it doesn’t sit easily with much of our thinking about cities. Our perceptions and prejudices are formed by a concentration of media and planning debate on inner city areas. Impressive CBD skylines dominate news bulletins and vision of crowded commuters boarding mass transit lead us to conclude that this must be the norm for a majority of people. It isn’t.

The same is true of the United States. A recent article by Demographia’s Wendell Cox, writing in Joel Kotkin’s New Geography showed that, based on US Census Data, the CBDs of 52 major metropolitan areas contained 9.1% of jobs, and the inner rings a further 9.8% of jobs. “Early suburbs” (meaning those developed first in the history of urban growth) contained 44% of jobs while “later suburbs” and “exurbs” contained a further 37% of jobs. And in terms of jobs growth for the same 52 US metro areas in the period 2010 to 2014, CBDs accounted for 12.6% of growth, the inner ring a further 6.8% while suburban and exurban areas combined to create 80.6% of jobs growth. 

If the reality of suburbia is that it is the dominant housing and employment location for the majority of urbanites, it is also a reality that the changing economic landscape, enabled by rapid advances in technology, is going to continue to reshape both the suburban and inner urban landscape. There will always be a role for central business districts as the seats of government or as headquarters of large professional corporates, as well as centres for civic cultural investment, but the growing service sector and growth in new industries might increasingly exploit more accessible, lower cost suburban locations. There’s merit in this, as it may allow more people to live closer to their work, in more affordable locations. It may also prove cheaper from an infrastructure point of view, especially if car sharing and ride sharing and driverless technology begins to liberate us from the twin burdens of congestion and exorbitantly costly mass transit solutions designed around centralised centres of work.

This “new suburbanism” presents all manner of opportunities for economic development, productivity growth and property development. Identifying what those opportunities are and how to best capture them will require a new framework for thinking about what it means to be ‘urban’ and that thinking, I suspect, will increasingly turn to the suburban solution.

Is heritage going too far?

The built form of cities reflects the demographics and economic structures of their eras. In the great age of rail, we built elaborate central train stations. In the age of mail, we built impressive post offices in central city and suburban locations. When cities functioned mainly as trading ports, we built wharves, warehouses and cargo handling facilities and CBDs effectively grew up around these functions. Many of these structures remain long past their economic use by date, and are often re-adapted to contemporary uses. The recent decision by Australia Post to sell its central GPOs for adaptive re-use is a case in point.

Re-purposing quality heritage structures ensures an ongoing economic role for these buildings, and in the process means they will be maintained and protected, as well as enjoyed by their tenants and the public. It allows cities to grow and develop and to adapt the built environment to the demands of contemporary economic life.  Preserving features of the past connects us all to our history and enhances the sense of place and belonging.

But is the drive to preserve past structures now going too far? Are we now locking down swathes of our urban landscape and preventing sensible adaption to modern lifestyles and economic change? Is it true that the notion of preserving anything ‘old’ has become so widespread that the merits of preservation go largely untested while any benefits of redevelopment are assumed to be nothing more than development profit for demonized ‘greedy developers’? Has it become, in the case of the preservation of built form, a matter of guilty until proven innocent?

This came into focus for me when some dilapidated pre-war homes in Highgate Hill – an inner suburb of Brisbane - which were approved for demolition suddenly became a cause celebre of a small but passionate and very vocal protest group. Yes, there was a local government election in the air but it’s a story that could be repeated in many Australian cities. Despite holding a legitimate license to demolish the properties in order to develop a five storey unit project - in line with the local plan for the area - the local and state governments succumbed to pressure and combined to issue a temporary stop order on any demolition.

Keep in mind these were dilapidated properties, allegedly riddled with termites and with significant amounts of asbestos. Any aesthetic value had long since disappeared after decades of being subject to multiple changes, partitions, and neglect. They had served their purpose for multiple generations of different types of occupants, but their use-by date was up.

They had sold in recent history to a developer with plans to follow the local planning scheme – a scheme endorsed by both local and state government. Evidently, when the properties were available for sale, our committed band of protesters did not buy the properties themselves. Concern for their protection did not extend to investing their own money in acquiring the properties and undertaking very extensive structural and design changes to restore them to some former glory.

What also became apparent from some media reports was that a number of the protesters, as nearby residents, were not ratepayers but renting houses or even just rooms in the area. You may think this too harsh, but it seems that not owning a nearby property (and hence not paying property taxes) is no obstacle to protesting that someone else’s property should be dealt with in a certain way. “No taxation without representation” was a slogan during the American Revolution. Now we have representation without taxation.  This group seemed to hold the view that a purchaser of these properties had some community obligation to undertake very extensive and costly renovations to restore derelict houses in line with what a small number of the nearby community believed should happen, irrespective of holding a valid license to demolish the properties and irrespective of the local community passing on the opportunity to buy the properties themselves.

And for what? Why this obsession with preservation even when it comes to structures that are clearly redundant or structurally deficient? We are not talking about highly significant heritage buildings of unique architectural or historic merit. We are not talking about public buildings in which the community has a legitimate say. We are talking about basic dwellings, privately owned, built of low cost materials available at the time and designed to suit a community and an economy that expired long ago.

The risk is that blanket preservation across swathes of our suburban and commercial centres prevents common sense rebuilding in line with contemporary needs. For starters, new housing tends to be more thermally and environmentally efficient. Anyone who has tried to cool, heat, or maintain an older style home will attest to that.  Further, modern housing is designed around the needs of today’s occupants – not households of more than 50 years ago. Plus, the local demography of many areas has entirely changed. Where once neighborhoods were busy with children playing in the street, some areas now house a large number of elderly who remain in homes that may no longer suit their needs because little is allowed to change (ie be redeveloped) in their neighborhood that might actually meet their needs. More important it seems to preserve dwellings that have outlived their purpose and insist that elderly relocate to somewhere else, than accommodate a changing community need.

Before you start sticking pins into a voodoo doll fashioned in my likeness, this is not advocating a ‘slash and burn’ of heritage properties. But it is trying to identify a clear difference between what constitutes a significant building or structure that is worthy of protection or adaptive reuse, and ones that are simply old.

It also raises a question about who should pay for this protection. Landmark public buildings are often paid for through adaptive reuse which identifies a new, alternate economic purpose. Failing this, taxpayers are generally willing to protect or maintain significant historic structures. But private homes are another thing. Only some are so significant that they have a market value which makes their preservation in private hands worthwhile to the owner. Run of the mill houses which are simply old may be more valuable for the land on which they sit than the structure above it. If these are to be preserved, unwillingly, by private owners – what compensation do we offer? None. Instead, the community is growing accustomed to the idea that they are entitled to have a greater say in what can and can’t be done with other people’s private homes in held in private hands for private use.

A city governed by excessive intervention in private property rights – all in the name of heritage protection – could find itself with large areas increasingly ill-suited to the modern world. We aren’t forced to keep driving around and maintaining old cars simply because they’re old – we are allowed to choose convenience and comfort and make fit-for-purpose decisions ourselves. Why is this increasingly not the case for the humble house?

Some themes for 2016?

What will we be reading about this year? What mega trends will dominate discussion? What markets are going to shine, and which ones will wane? Everyone has their own ideas on a topic like this, and below are some of my suggestions. Hope you all have a good 2016.

Suburbia.

I’m declaring 2016 the Year of Suburbia! Why? Because I think the penny will start to drop that the CBDs and inner cities are not the be all and end all of what it means to be ‘urban.’ The suburban and even peri-urban economies of some large urban areas have been growing stronger than their inner cities, and the ‘burbs’ are also where most of us continue to choose to live and raise families. I know this runs counter to trendy policy debate which would have us believe that everyone wants to live as close to the CBD as they can, because (supposedly) this is where all the jobs are. But the facts say otherwise (though few bother with the facts these days). Later this year, the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism is running a conference on the theme ‘The Future of Suburbia’ and they have launched a multi-year project ‘Infinite Suburbia’ which will examine aspects of suburban improvement. I’ll be relaying as much of that thought leadership work, plus ideas from other sources, as I can. Watch this space. 

Apartments. 

There is going to be oversupply in some key markets and it but will increasingly emerge that the flood of one and two bedroom stock is not what was wanted by residents, but rather what was saleable to investors (and their advisors). Rising vacancies and falling values are going to be inevitable as supply and demand rebalance over time. The boosters who claimed that ‘Australians have abandoned the dream’ of a detached suburban home in favour of an inner city micro apartment will no doubt contort themselves with retrospective explanations for settlement failures and rising vacancies – neither of which would happen if the product was supposedly so much in demand in the first place. This at least will prove entertaining. 

Housing prices. 

The Sydney market is going to cool. It has to: sustaining the sort of irrational exuberance we’ve seen in recent years over the long term just doesn’t happen without a hangover to follow. Demographia’s annual survey of world housing markets puts Sydney at the global pointy end of plain nasty when it comes to affordability, at 12.2 times incomes. Only Hong Kong is worse. Pundits who are predicting that as Sydney cools, property appetites will shift to markets that haven’t tested the limits of sanity – like Brisbane – may be disappointed. Queensland’s economy is drifting along in the doldrums, ranked by Commsec as only marginally better than South Australia or Tasmania. Oh, the shame. Without a strong economy, the property sun will struggle to shine brightly, with some regional exceptions. As always, the media obsession with housing will mean we’ll continue to read a lot on this subject. Much of it rubbish. 

India. 

India and talk about India I am guessing will increase this year as markets look for ‘the next big thing.’ And India seems to have it: their population will soon overtake China’s, and their economic growth is forecast by the IMF to reach 7.3 per in 2015-16 and 7.5 per cent in 2016-17, which is more than China’s. Their GDP per capita has a long way to go – it is currently only around US$1,500. China by comparison is around $7,000 and Australia around $50,000.  So maybe the only way is up? They have a western democratic system (much of it, like ours, dysfunctional) and a Prime Minister in Narendra Modi who by all accounts is a good leader and keen to see the economy grow. Which should mean they will need the things Australia is good at – low value add resources which are just waiting to be dug up and sold to someone who knows how to add value. Expect to read more of what India means to Australia in coming years. 

China. 

We’ve become obsessed with China and that’s unlikely to change much. Reports of ‘China’s slowing economy’ are misleading but that never stopped our media, or dimwit analysts in search of a headline.  China’s economic rate of growth has slowed to a reported 6.9%. But this is still growth. It is not a slowing. It may be the slowest rate of growth in 25 years but it is still growth. The global growth forecast, by way of comparison, is just 3.4%. The USA – the world’s largest economy – is forecast to grow at 2.7% and Australia by only around 2%. China’s growth forecast for the year ahead is 6.3%. I’m sure if Australia was growing by even 5% we’d be very happy little Vegemites with roses on our cheeks, but it seems we are paralysed by talk of China’s rate of growth slowing to over 6%. That’s like telling someone doing 100 kph they’re going too slow when you’re only doing 50kph yourself. Logical? No.

Oil. 

It recently fell to below $30 a barrel and is now climbing to the mid $30s but that’s a long way down from over $100 less than 12 months ago. So whatever happened to all that ‘peak oil’ talk and where are those forecasters now? It’s hard to see things staying this way, despite what the hopeful and the faithful believe might happen with renewables. Oil is used in everything, from fertilizer, to plastics, to energy. Plus it’s an unbeatably efficient form of energy and the world seems to have plenty of it, and the ability to find more once the price gets to around $60 a barrel. I’m no expert on commodities but the price of something so essential to our economy is going to have to figure prominently in the news media as the year unfolds, surely?

Ageing.

Demography is destiny. In Australia, we are still to confront the realities of how our ageing population is going to impact on us all. More retirees – the majority on limited incomes or who are pension reliant – being supported by relatively fewer taxpayers, is not a good formula but it’s what we are faced with. Plenty of businesses will find opportunity servicing the upper income end of the retiree and aged care cohort but few are talking solutions for the majority on lower incomes for whom commercial solutions are simply unaffordable. There will have to be significant changes to retirement policy and tax treatment of the family home for pensioners will probably become part of that. Expect this debate to become increasingly prominent as taxpayers resist tax increases to pay for pensioners and pensioners vehemently resist any dilution of their benefits. 

Immigration and population. 

Angela Merkel looked at Germany’s shrinking workforce and population predictions and opened the door to arrivals on an unprecedented scale. Was she hoping to plug a workforce gap? Will Australia likewise look to importing a solution to its need for more working age taxpayers (and maybe in the hope that some rapid fire population growth will stimulate the economy) by increasing immigration intake? The ‘big Australia’ debate never really went away and perhaps it will make itself felt again this year. Given our strong views both ways, and the racial nerve that often flares, this is a topic that will at least bubble away, occasionally surfacing in a blaze of heated opinion.