Abstract: Urban fringe residential development is a common practice in Australia, increasingly located in bushfire-prone areas. This vulnerability condition may lead to bushfire disasters; in this case, evacuation is deemed as an effective risk reduction strategy, as stated by the AFAC’s ‘stay and defend, or leave early’ policy. For emergency planning purposes, it is critical to estimate the range of times involved in the evacuation of a community, and the factors that might influence it. This paper addresses this issue with a particular emphasis on spatial configuration. It aims to evaluate (1) the total required evacuation time for a given urban fringe community during a bushfire; (2) the way urban structure characteristics affect that time; and (3) the emergency management policy implications related to those findings. To achieve this, an agent-based computer model is used to analyse three small-scale case studies in Bendigo, Victoria. The results show that a complete evacuation takes considerable time (between 30 minutes and 1 hour), despite spatial different sizes and urban patterns, and that it is possible for bushfires to overrun or surround settlements before people leave following a warning. This confirms the ‘leave early’ policy as appropriate, if adequately supported by timely warning systems with a high degree of penetration across the population. Certain urban structure characteristics, such as urban density, appear to have an impact on the total evacuation time. By enhancing the model with further case studies and evacuees’ behavioural characteristics, evacuation based comprehensive design standards for urban fringe areas could be developed.