Australian cities are undergoing a range of high pressure growth drivers in most cases. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth are all growing under comparable pressures. Darwin has its own set of pressures that mark it out from the rest. Adelaide and Hobart may be dealing with rather different issues of lower growth.

However, all these cities have markedly differing sub-regions and areas within them that are performing in a range of ways. In the growth cities, these pressures include, in no particular order:

• the changing scale and function of Australia’s cities within a global system of cities

• the changing role of Australian cities in their regional economies

• population growth and immigration

• changing household structures

• employment restructuring and differential regional economic development

• land release pressures

• the ageing of housing stock and infrastructure – city life cycles

• the changing impact of information technology, electronic media and communications

• environmental constraints

• urban policy pressures (consolidation)

• public policy changes, particularly in terms of the spatial impacts of fiscal and welfare policy change

• changes in transport policy and infrastructure provision

• social and economic infrastructure developments

• cultural and life-style changes

• housing market dynamics and financing.

All these drivers are pulling and pushing the city in a range of directions, some working together while some are working contrapuntally.