Urban living: the shrinking fringe

We’ll all be ‘rooned' said Hanrahan…apologies to John O’Brien for the use of his words but the gloom of the poem is apt.

We’ll all be ruined, I hear and cringe,
If we don’t release land on the urban fringe.
No jobs, no homes just the city and slum. 
The government must act, the people are glum.

Australia is a growing country. There is no doubt about that, and we need to accommodate that growth. According to the ABS, Australia's population grew by 1.4 per cent during the year ended 31 March 2011. It also notes that the growth rate has been declining since the peak of 2.2 per cent for the year ended 31 December 2008. The figure this year showed the lowest growth rate since the year ended 30 September 2005.

If we put a few trends together there seems to be an emerging picture different to that portrayed by the doomsday cult for the expansion of the urban fringe.

We have an aging population. This brings changes in requirements as people begin to trade off lifestyle and housing options.  Ongoing work by the University of the Sunshine Coast into housing preferences for seniors found some interesting trends.

For instance, there was a distinct preference for housing in walkable locations close to shops, employment and services. Shops in this instance are characterised by fine grain retail shops – ‘High Streets’ – as opposed to big box internal mall offerings such as your standard Westfields.

There was also a strong desire for public transport facilities, not just for seniors to access services but to enable others to access them.

It is becoming evident from this unfolding work that seniors understood very clearly, that there were health benefits in being located close to stimulating environments particularly those with young people. Access to education assisted in providing this stimulation. These facilities will not be located on the fringe as they usually need larger urban catchments.

Another trend worth noting is the reduction in car usage across the developed world, a phenomenon referred to as Peak Car Usage.

In an article in The Fifth Estate entitled Peak Car Use, Newman and Kenworthy note research indicates a slow down in growth of car usage (car use per capita) in cities in the developed world from a high in the 1960s of 42 per cent, in the 1970s of 26 per cent and the 1980s of 23 per cent. New data from the researchers shows that the period 1995-2005 had a growth in car use per capita of just 5.1 per cent. 

The article goes on to explore the reasons for this and they note the following factors that are influential on the slow down in growth of car use:

• Hitting the Marchetti wall - all cities have a similar average travel time budget of around one hour, which seems to be biologically based in humans. We don’t like to take more than an hour just getting to work and then back home.
• Growth of public transport both in ridership and in physical availability of services.
• Reversal of urban sprawl or perhaps more appropriately, the densification of our cities. That of course is based on our personal experiences of density. Density means different things to different people. Density in Toowoomba is hardly the same as inner Melbourne - and neither should it.
• Growth of a culture of urbanism. Highlighted by the USC research is that people prefer a more fine grain urban experience, which can’t be satisfied by the big box internal mall and the urban fringe sprawl.
• Rising fuel prices which will impact more on those with further to drive.

I will add to this a trend towards regionalism that is being felt in states like Victoria. Investment in rail networks means that towns like Bendigo become part  of the option for lifestyle and living choice. I would suggest again that this reconfirms people's proclivity and preference for a finer grain urban environment, albeit in a regional setting.

All these factors point to a picture that says the rush to the fringe is not in fact what a significant portion of the population iscafter. Indeed, it seems a greater trend towards urban living in denser suburbs is becoming more the norm for both young and old. This brings with it its own issues of place making, acoustic and visual privacy, open space but that is a discussion for another day.

Perhaps even the word 'suburb' is no longer appropriate for the developing centres of activity that are attracting this growth. By way of example, South Brisbane and West End, close to Brisbane’s city centre, are developing as centres of density and vitality because of the richness of the urban offering, access to services, culture and employment. Add to this mix affordability in housing and the attraction of vibrant centres is obvious for both old and young alike.

This will not suit everyone. No one will deny that some people are after that lifestyle and product that only developments on the fringe deliver. But let's not kid ourselves that the fringe is a panacea for housing stress and certainly not for affordability. 

Indeed, as peak oil approaches, it is these same fringe areas that are most vulnerable as the twin factors of peak oil and mortgage stress meet at this point.

The VAMPIRE index (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage, Petroleum and Inflation Risks and Expenses) identifies the relative degree of socio-economic stress in suburbs in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. VAMPIRE mapping undertaken by Sipe and Dodson (2008) found that in general higher and lower vulnerability are concentrated in different sub-regions of our cities. Despite some local variation, higher vulnerability tends to be found in outer suburban areaswhere cheaper housing attracts modest-income home purchasers and where transport systems are highly dependent on automobile travel. By comparison, households in inner suburban locations typically experience the advantages, from an oil vulnerability perspective, of higher incomes and lower reliance on automobiles for transport than those in outer suburban zones.

Simply releasing land on the fringe for residential development is false economy and poor planning. I offer the following as part of the reasoning: 

• It pays no attention to broader societal trends for living and lifestyle that are clearly changing with the changing demographic of cities and suburbs;
• It fundamentally misrepresents the desires of an ever growing market segment that value ‘place’ as well as affordability;
• It pays no deference to the shape and form the city should have with regard to the creation of rich and vital neighbourhoods and centres. This does not include plonking a big box retail mall down in the middle of a residential housing estate and calling it a centre;
• It does not promote sustainable and resilient communities able to accommodate change, particularly economic changes; and
• It undervalues the role regional centres can play in accommodating growth as part of a larger regional picture.

No we won’t be ‘rooned'. if we don’t release more land on the fringe. In fact we need to be very conscious of how we do it and exactly what growth we are accommodating. The social and financial consequences of continued urban sprawl are becoming more and more evident.

Urban development in fringe areas is only part of the growth equation. The argument we need to turn our attention to is the creation of better and more sustainable places in all our urban areas, especially the fringe.