Better suburbs = better cities

Perhaps the inner cities are seen as more glamorous? There are more higher paying jobs and more CEOs to the square mile than anywhere else. It's where cultural facilities and seats of government are found. It's where the most expensive real estate is. Basically, any concentration of money plus power is always going to grab attention. It's an age when celebrity tweets capture more media and public attention than important issues of economic policy. The CBDs and inner city areas are widely seen as 'where it's at' and where the cool people are. 'Nuff said?

Sadly, even policy makers seem to have fallen for the inner city bling over suburban substance. The importance of transport workers, freight workers, teachers, doctors, tradies or suburban white collar employment to the economy receives next to no policy comment. The performance of suburban transport systems, the need to promote higher employment density in key centres, the pathways by which property owners could be encouraged to partner with public sector agencies for suburban centre improvement – none of these seem to appear as workshop or forum topics promoted by any of the leading industry groups.

I suspect there's also a strong element of cultural cringe as it applies to our suburban heritage. Frequently mocked as a cultural wasteland or 'home of the bogan', there's an almost desperate desire to prove we're an advanced society by focussing on the lifestyles and achievements of our inner city areas and the people who live and work there, to the exclusion of all else. 'Urbanists' grab headlines and appear as keynotes at any number of planning conferences. Sub urbanists (and there are plenty of them) are evidently persona non grata.

It's as if a prosperous, successful and highly efficient suburban economy simply doesn't cut it in the global race for attention and status amongst cities, which seems almost exclusively focussed on the how much like downtown New York or downtown Paris every other city can pretend to be.

The reality is that the inner city economy is reliant on – not divorced from – the performance of the suburban economy. In the same way that there can be no public sector without a profitable private sector, I suggest that a strong and prosperous inner city economy relies heavily on a strong and prosperous suburban economy. And in the same way that strategic infrastructure and policy decisions are needed for the inner city to operate at optimum efficiency, the exact same applies to suburban economies.

The question is whether this balance is being achieved.