The economic dynamics and population change of Australia’s regional cities

Abstract

This research investigates patterns and dynamics of population, migration and economic change in Australian regional urban centres 2011–2016 through the changing economic profile and performance of Australia’s regional urban centres and assesses how demographic and migration patterns are shaping and responding to economic change.The contribution of regional urban centres to Australia’s economic and population growth has been a topic of growing policy interest in the past two decades, as a result of rapid growth in the major cities and concerns for parts of regional Australia that have experienced population decline. Associated with these trends is the distribution of economic activity and employment—particularly as traditional regional strengths such as agriculture, manufacturing and mining have declined as sources of employment in recent decades.This analysis identifies three significant trends: larger and metropolitan-proximate regional urban centres are generally increasing in population more rapidly than other regional urban centres; coastal urban centres have experienced faster population growth rates than inland urban centres; and population losses tend to be concentrated in inland, smaller, remote and often resource-reliant towns.

Growing Australia’s smaller cities to better manage population growth

“…DCEs allow for the testing of hypothetical future scenarios that might differ considerably from present conditions. The methods deployed in both the DCE modelling and in the analysis of Census data are described in considerable detail in the reports for Projects A and B (Li, Denham et al 2022;Vij, Ardeshiri et al 2022).…”

“…This chapter reviews previous research on this topic, and draws on Project A (Li, Denham et al 2022) and other sources to better understand the complexity evident among Australia's smaller cities, the history of debate and policy development surrounding their development and the broad-scale drivers of change shaping their futures.…”

“…2. Understanding Australia's smaller cities 2.1 Australia's smaller cities: their contribution to employment and population growth As Li, Denham et al (2022) observed, the contribution of regional urban centres to Australia's economic and population growth has been a topic of substantial policy interest in the past two decades. This interest has grown as the problems of accommodating further population into the five major cities become increasingly manifest, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.…”

“…Policy agencies such as the Productivity Commission (2017) and Infrastructure Australia (2018) have raised concerns about the capacity of the major cities to accommodate greater population, while sustaining productivity and liveability (Li, Denham et al 2022). Policy debate has turned to the potential opportunities smaller cities offer for reducing urban congestion while better distributing economic activity (Correia and Denham 2016; Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2018b).…”

“…Doubts have been raised about the economic resilience of smaller cities (Courvisanos, Jain et al 2016;Productivity Commission 2017) and this is important in considering population increases (Li, Denham et al 2022). Smaller cities and major regional centres are typically directly exposed to sectors that fluctuate because of global market conditions, and this includes industries such as mining or agriculture.…”