“Around the world, the vast majority of people are moving to cities not to inhabit their centres but to suburbanise their peripheries. Thus when the United Nations projects the number of future ‘urban’ residents… these figures largely reflect the unprecedented suburban expansion of global cities.” That’s from the second line of the introduction to a…
In amongst changing Prime Ministers (again) or our ongoing obsession with all things Trump, there mustn’t have been much room left in the media this year for analysis of interesting jobs forecasts and other economic news. This one missed my attention, but it’s very interesting: the Federal Government’s Department of Jobs and Small Business earlier…
Auction clearance rates are falling, sales volumes slowing, and prices are coming off the boil in the formerly red hot markets of Sydney and Melbourne. This is bad news for State Governments who have increasingly relied on property taxes to fund a growing list of infrastructure promises from transport to schools to hospitals. It could…
Australia relies mostly on net overseas migration to sustain its rate of population growth. Our population grew by 1.6% in the year to March 2018, or by around 380,000 people. Of this, natural population growth contributed over a third (144,000) while overseas migration contributed the rest (237,000 people). So what would happen if growing community…
We’ve been here before – concerns about our capacity to house a large population are not new. But lately, hostility to rapid rates of population growth is gaining traction. There have been calls for a population enquiry and former PM Abbott has called for immigration (and hence population growth) to be slashed. He joins a…
Positive net interstate migration to Queensland has in the past been a driver of growth for the Queensland economy. This is mainly because (contrary to popular opinion at the time) interstate migrants were not retirees but the average age was in fact around 35 — prime family stage of life, which is where household spending peaks. …
US based urbanist Richard Florida – once described as an “intellectual Rockstar” – shot to fame with his 2002 book The Creative Class. He was on a global speaking tour that took in many Australian cities, arguing that the secrets to economic development lay in attracting legions of creatively motivated progressives working in new economy…
