The purpose of this paper is t o establish the extent to which recent population movements in Australia conform to a trend, hypothesised by theory and supported by empirical evidence from a number of more developed countries, towards dispersal from metropolitan-dominated core regions. To this end, attention is focussed upon a preliminary analysis of changes in net internal migration rates between 1966-71 and 197 1-76 within the metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions of Australia. It is believed that this temporal and spatial analysis provides interpretative insights into contemporary, dynamic demographic adjustments within Australia over and above those to be gained by simply examining regional variations in population growth rates. PROCESSES OF POLARISATlON A N D DISPERSALUnilinear development stage theories postulate that there are systematic inter-relationships between development and space, such that the evolution of spatial structure proceeds from a largely concentrated pattern to one that is more spatially dispersed (Friedmann, 1973, 83).Specifically, it is asserted that, with the onset of industrialisation. economic growth appears in those regions which possess superior inherent resource or comparative locational advantages.Thereafter, polarisation-the propensity for incremental regional growth to arrange itself in clusters or to be drawn towards existing centres (Parr, 1973, 183)-of economic activity and population in this limited number of regions will proceed apace. Under the free play of market forces, population will be pushed from peripheral regions of impediment and pulled to core regions of opportunity. It is in these latter regions that numerous internal conditions favourable for increased economic expansion-ini tial advantages, the coincidence of national centres of production and consumption, access to government and tertiary and quaternary institutions, generative forces of invention and innovation, external scale economies, the operation of Keynesian and technological multipliers and the attainment of successively higher market thresholds-act in a self-reinforcing and cumulative manner to sustain virtuous circles of growth and the consequent attraction t o them of further flows of factors ofproduction, including labour (Stohr, 1974, 13-20), Subsequently, however, it is suggested that the more effective and progressive spatial integration of economy and society will lead, at some stage, to the diffusion of population and economic activity from core toperiphery (Richardson, 1973,138-39). Such diffusion can be seen
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