Project overview

Disadvantage is an umbrella term embracing a range of concepts including poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and social capital. Spatial disadvantage is likewise an umbrella term incorporating three concepts: locational disadvantage, places with social problems, and concentrated disadvantage, the latter referring to places accommodating a disproportionate number of socio-economically disadvantaged people. This Multi-Year Research Project (MYRP) drew on a range of quantitative and qualitative studies to understand the geography of socio-economic disadvantage in three major cities in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane), the experience of living in a ‘disadvantaged area’ and the ways that housing policies and processes are implicated in the changing patterns observed.

Socio-economically disadvantaged populations of Australia’s major cities are now substantially clustered into middle and outer metropolitan suburbs. While suburbanisation of socially disadvantaged populations is an international trend (including in Europe and North America) it was first noticed in Australia and has impacted more decisively here than elsewhere. Even so, by comparison with some other developed countries, especially the USA, the depth of spatial disadvantage remains moderate rather than extreme. Furthermore, this study shows that residents often viewed their neighbourhoods in positive terms, even while acknowledging they faced particular locational and socio-economic disadvantages.

The study discovered four discernible types of locations with disadvantage, each with distinctive demographic, labour market and housing characteristics. Relatively disadvantaged areas tend to have more private and social rentals and are at the lower end of the steepening house price/rent gradient between inner localities and the outer suburbs. They also have poorer labour market characteristics, with the least mobile component of the workforce increasingly cut off from the inner city growth of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus compounding the economic exclusion of lower income urban Australians. Relative disadvantage also undermined overall urban productivity.

The evolving geography of disadvantage reflects polarising market forces. At the same time, direct and indirect government expenditure on housing is profoundly regressive, privileging socio-economically advantaged locations. Households in the top 25 per cent most advantaged postcodes received, on average, $4 600 in direct and indirect government housing benefits in 2011–12, while households in the 25 per cent least advantaged postcodes received, on average, $2 800 in direct and indirect benefits.

Interventions to moderate inequality might address people and place, and might vary according to location and disadvantage type. Examples of place based interventions could include affordable housing in accessible locations via inclusionary zoning; transport and other productive infrastructure investment in secondary growth nodes to promote economic decentralisation, and investment in cultural infrastructure in non-CBD locations.