Urban living: the shrinking fringe

• 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.