Relocating Disadvantage in Five Australian Cities: Socio-spatial Polarisation under Neo-liberalism

During the mid-1980s, the Australian political discourse shifted decisively towards a neo-liberal political agenda that has remained the dominant policy paradigm ever since. Arguably, a key outcome of this has been an increase in social inequality. However, there has been little acknowledgement of this process in Australian urban policy debates. Yet these social outcomes have been accompanied by distinctive impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the Australian city. Using Census data over a 25 year period between 1986 and 2011, this paper analyses the trend towards a marked suburbanisation of the most disadvantaged households in the five major Australian cities. Its conclusions have relevance for current metropolitan planning strategies and their capacity to address what is emerging as Australia’s version of the now more widely recognised “urban inversion” of the last quarter of a century.