NEW PATTERNS OF URBAN AND REGIONAL-DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA - DEMOGRAPHIC RESTRUCTURING AND ECONOMIC-CHANGE

Up to the early 1970s Australian urban history was generally considere d to be distinctively different from that of North American or Europea n countries. Since then, however, economic restructuring and demograph ic change have contributed to changes within urban and regional system s which have stimulated extensive commentary and debate. The first obj ective of this paper is to assess whether the dynamics of Australian u rban and regional change are increasingly resembling those of other ad vanced capitalist nations, as all are subject increasingly to global f orces of change. One theme in Australian debates has been the notion t hat there has been an urban-rural turnaround, or counter-urbanization, which is changing the relative balance of the building blocks of the Australian urban and regional system. A second objective has been to r espond to this thesis. The analysis of census data on population chang e is used as evidence for the argument that there are significant diff erences between processes of change in the Australian urban/regional s ystem and experience in North America and Europe. It is also argued th at the counter-urbanization thesis is flawed conceptually, but that th ere has been significant restructuring of the Australian urban and reg ional system, which is increasingly dominated by three sprawling conur bations and a rapidly growing and extensive coastal zone of consumptio n centres and suburban development. These developments have implicatio ns both for our understanding of the overall dynamics of urban and reg ional change in Australia and also for some local political debates ov er consumption issues.