City versus suburbs or regions?

This week the Committee for Brisbane released its 2024 “Inner City Vitality” report, outlining how the various parts of the inner city economy were performing. The project came from an early idea of mine when, back in mid-2018, I suggested we needed more than just an office market report to assess inner city economic health. The 2024 Committee for Brisbane report does just that, showing a resurgent post-covid inner-city economy, with sectors like education and health doing a lot of heavy lifting. There are some impressive numbers in the report, and it’s the economic diversity of Brisbane’s inner city that distinguishes it from still languishing “office mostly” economies elsewhere around the world. I was happy to have this year supported the Committee for Brisbane and work with economists Urban Economics to breathe some new energy into this important piece of economic research.

If there’s any disappointing aspect to the work, it’s the response of some in the industry who question the idea that you can be an advocate for suburban economic development and interested in the life of the inner city at the same time. I’ve got news for them: I am also an advocate for regional and rural development, along with the suburbs and the city. It’s not just possible but very important that we are.

Imagine for example you’re a race car team and have developed a revolutionary engine which packs V12 power into a lightweight (electric of course) engine with record breaking acceleration, eye watering top speeds and 1000 kilometres’ range with a recharge in just minutes. You’re patting yourself on the back, self-assured of winning every race until you realise the chassis is rusty, the suspension is shot and the tyres are flat. You won’t win a race against a rickshaw in that thing.

Investing all your energy, plans, and capital into just one piece of the car isn’t going to win you any races. Likewise, if we continue to focus too much on one part of our economy while others are allowed to run down, we are never to going to realise our full potential.

There are suburban business precincts across southeast Queensland that are an embarrassment. Some of the privileged “inner-city-first” advocates may not have visited them to realise it, preferring instead to spend most of their lives surrounded by the sumptuous and refined vibe of a James Street or West Village. Both are wonderful places but both used to be run down industrial precincts. Why not aspire to similar outcomes for Salisbury, Northgate, Mt Gravatt, Caboolture, Ipswich, Beenleigh or Southport for example? Why not become advocates for places less well off?

Equally, there are regional cities in this state that generate a great deal of wealth for Queensland but see little of it returned. Gladstone, for example, is an economic powerhouse with a regional economic output of over $20 billion per annum. Yet only a couple of years ago it closed its maternity unit at Gladstone Hospital. ‘Can’t get the staff’ was the explanation. Maybe if Gladstone enjoyed some of the urban amenities that residents of New Farm take for granted, it might have been a different story. Access to quality health care and education, quality housing and an amenable built environment are the basics of business and talent attraction.

If it’s a case of “who in their right mind would want to move there?” then it’s an uphill battle. It shouldn’t be.

One of the secrets to a stronger Queensland economy will be equitable and targeted investment in our suburbs and regions – along with the inner city. We have in the past been guilty – in my opinion – of doing one and not the other. Nothing is more telling nor indefensible than this analysis by Suburban Futures of the past 12 years’ worth of successive state budgets.

Little wonder the inner city is in good health. And little wonder the Mayor of the City of Moreton Bay Peter Flannery sounds like a scratched record when it comes to inadequate infrastructure spending. Close behind him are the Mayors of Logan, Ipswich, Scenic Rim and pretty much every other Mayor of a regional city.  Been to Mt Isa lately? I haven’t, but it’s been described to me as Alice Springs 2.0. Their copper mine closes next year with a massive adverse community impact. And the plan for Mt Isa is what exactly?

None of this is accidental. In fact, it is arguably deliberate. Have a look at some more work by Suburban Futures which compared planned population targets across Southeast Queensland with expected future job numbers. Places like Moreton Bay, Logan, Ipswich, the Sunshine and Gold Coasts are expected to house a very high share of regional population growth but there seems no commensurably equitable plan for jobs near where these people will live.

These numbers are drawn from “Shaping SEQ 2023” – the official plan for southeast Queensland. It’s policy, but it’s not good policy.

This disproportionate allocation of resources and opportunity can lead to an ‘us and them’ rivalry where regions and suburbs will increasingly feel divorced from the economic and lifestyle opportunities so readily available to the inner city. This is only made worse when some of the very beneficiaries of this preferential treatment sneer at the suburbs or regions as somehow second-rate places full of second-rate people. In the USA Hillary Clinton once called them “deplorables.” Joe Biden this year let slip with “garbage.” How did it end for them?

We can still avoid this in Queensland. We do not want to be a class society based on a geography of privilege but instead one where our respective strengths are exploited and our weaknesses supported. There are very good reasons to support the continuing economic development of Brisbane’s inner-city economy. There are also very compelling reasons to invest in similar economic opportunity in run down suburban and regional centres. What is good for one may be different for the other – but the effort and interest to understand what is needed should be equally apportioned.

The suburbs and regions appeal to me because it strikes me this is where so much unrealised potential lies. It’s also where most of us work, live and play. Personally, I think it’s great to see our inner-city economy shake off the covid lockdown impacts and be bouncing back, as good as ever. I also believe we’d be a better city-region if we could say the same about our suburbs; we’d be a better state if we could say the same about our regions, and we’d be a better nation if we could say the same about us all sharing access to similar lifestyle and economic opportunities. 

There could be many more voices from the city calling for this.