Immigration and Housing in an Emerging Global City, Sydney, Australia

By 2001, 33 per cent of Sydney's population of 4.2 million was born overseas. In the previous 15 years, 38 per cent of all immigrants to Australia settled in Sydney compared to the national population share of 21 per cent. Housing costs are highest in Sydney of any of the metropolitan cities in Australia and Sydney's emergence as a global city affects the housing market and has attracted diverse communities and skilled immigrants. This article presents Australian Bureau of Statistics census data to trace trends in home ownership and tenure among key immigrant groups in Sydney from the post-war era to recent times. It discusses the key factors that influence immigrant progress through the housing market and explores the dynamics of Sydney's residential mosaic.     

(Re)Viewing Ethnic Residential Segregation in Southern European Cities: Housing and Urban Regimes as Mechanisms of Marginalisation

Housing and residential marginalisation in Southern European cities represents the most critical and controversial of urban conditions for the settlement and inclusion of immigrants. However, these issues are conspicuously under-researched in both the international and Southern European comparative literature. The complexity of ethnic housing hardship and segregation is often de-problematised and misleadingly attributed solely to market mechanisms or inevitable polarisation dynamics. This paper reviews the distinctive features of ethnic residential segregation within wider societal and urban contexts, drawing on an analysis of eight Mediterranean cities with a special focus on the role of housing systems and processes of ethnic and social differentiation. Problems and drivers are reconceptualised within an holistic, comparative framework. It is demonstrated that low levels of ethnic spatial segregation conceal a real problem of social residential marginalisation. This paradox predominantly originates from macro-scale mechanisms of differentiation rooted in the welfare redistributive arrangements and dualist housing systems. It is additionally reinforced by current urban renewal strategies.     

Sydney's Future

In October, 1993, the New South Wales Department of Planning released, Sydney's Future, a draft strategy for the state's greater metropolitan region to 2011. The region encompasses Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong and includes almost 70 per cent of the population of New South Wales.     

Building the Connection Between Housing Needs and Metropolitan Planning in Sydney,Australia

The theme of a more compact city has been a central feature of planning policy for Sydney's development over the last two decades. Urban consolidation, in the form of attached dwellings in medium- and high-density configurations, has become the predominant form of new residential development since the early 1990s. One of the largely untested claims for this policy is that it provides more housing choice for an increasingly diverse population and that simply building larger amounts of smaller housing in high-density concentrations will be sufficient to meet that demand. As a result, planning for higher density housing has been undertaken with little explicit recognition of the housing sub-markets higher density housing caters for or their specific spatial characteristics within the city. These issues are examined by an analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of areas with high concentrations of attached housing. These data are processed by factor analysis to identify and locate the range of sub-markets within attached housing and additional small area data used to fill out the market profiling. The results reveal that a range of specific housing needs are met by this form of housing with discriminative characteristics in certain locations. In other words, higher density housing is associated with a range of locationally specific and spatially distinctive sub-markets. These findings are particularly relevant and timely as a new metropolitan strategy is in preparation for Sydney where an estimated 60–70 per cent of new dwelling provision in the next 30 years will take place within existing suburbs through higher density redevelopment. Planning for such development must take into account the local markets for such accommodation which have very different characteristics in different parts of the city.     

Segregation and Marginalisation within Public Housing: The Disadvantaged in Bedok New Town,Singapore

This paper examines segregation within public housing in Bedok New Town, Singapore. The highly structured and regulated public housing sector, accommodating 86 per cent of the total Singapore population, provides an interesting look at the issue of 'choice' and 'constraint', and their implications for segregation. Using the index of dissimilarity to measure evenness of distribution and the P* index to measure social interaction and isolation, the data show that lower-income members of Indian ethnic background had become more segregated between 1980 and 1990. The eligibility criteria and allocation procedures pertaining to public housing help channel certain groups of residents into a narrow array of housing types in strictly defined locations. Particular socio-demographic features of lower-income Indians, coupled with their numerical inferiority, leads to a weak position within the housing market. The issue of constrained choice is especially relevant for this group of public housing residents.     

Urban growth,transportation and the spatial dimension of the labour market: A note

Recently, Duranton and Turner estimated the impact of interstate highways on the average growth of US cities between 1983 and 2003. By estimating a structural model, one of their striking points is that increasing a city's initial stock of highways by 10 per cent leads to a 1.5 per cent positive respond of the city's employment over the sample period. This note mainly argues that their investigation leaves out potential spillovers of labour input from neighbouring growth centres/cities in the steady‐state directly implied by the open city assumption. More specifically, this contribution readily extends Duranton and Turner's work by a general equilibrium effect induced by the urban system's labour market fluctuations which is a direct consequence of the open city assumption.     

Human capital spillovers in Dutch cities: consumption or productivity?

We study the recursive relationship between the ability of Dutch cities to attract recent graduate human capital to their labour—or housing markets and a city’s skills structure, using a comprehensive dataset and a novel operationalisation strategy. We disentangle production and consumption spillovers by separating out human capital employed in a city’s labour market and human capital present in a city’s resident population, respectively. We do so for both the recent graduates flowing into Dutch cities to find work and a residential location, as well as for the incumbent workers and population. We control for the effects of a city’s skills endowments, its (non-) economic characteristics and those of other relevant cities. We find positive effects of a relatively strong graduate labour market inflow on the share of higher and scientific-level jobs. Production spillovers therefore predominantly occur among the higher skilled. Contrary to the higher educated incumbent population, which appears to prefer high skilled services, recent graduate inflows to residential areas have positive effects on the share of jobs requiring lower and medium skills. Consumption spillovers from graduate residential inflows thus occur between higher and lower skilled.     

Ghettos, immigrants, and integration the French dilemma

France has experienced mass migrations for over one and a half century, but only recently have the French acknowledged the country's ethnic diversity. The perception of the importance of immigration in French society is linked to the increased visibility of some ethnic groups within the social space. The process has become so widespread that it may evoke an ‘ethnic fragmentation’ of society. This fear shows up especially in relation to the residential concentration of stigmatized ethnic minorities, in so-called ghettos. The aim of this paper is to identify the various mechanisms underlying these concentrations and to analyze the impact of policies against segregation on immigrants’ housing opportunities. Our position is that public policies are meant to reduce concentration in the attractive part of the housing structure. One consequence of these policies is that segregation of certain ethnic minorities becomes stronger in the most deprived part. This ethnically oriented segregation is not given enough attention by national authorities. We argue that the residential careers of stigmatized ethnic minorities are largely determined by institutional discrimination, which exacerbates the widespread problem of prejudice in the housing market.     

Residential Distribution of the Emergent Class of Skilled Migrants in Nanjing

Migration in China is traditionally dominated by unskilled rural-urban migrants that find their way into the city through urban villages, dormitories or informal housing. However, a remarkable increase in the number of skilled migrants has been witnessed with the economic restructuring. Reforms in the labour and housing market have shifted the spatial arrangement of opportunities, consequently changing migrants' access to the cities. Using 2000 Population Census and employing spatial regression models, this study shows skilled migrants to have better access to the city in the sense that their residences locate in the areas with more professional jobs and better houses. It is their advantages in the labour market that determines their favoured access to the public sector housing, resulting in better residential locations. Female skilled migrants are less likely than males to settle in areas with a large proportion of urban village housing or shared accommodation. These findings reveal the heterogeneity among migrants and the concomitant differences in spatial behaviour.     

Local housing policy and residential segregation

The focus of the article is on the relationship between local housing policy and residential segregation. The former is specified as decisions concerning type of tenure and the location of new dwellings, the latter in terms of class and income. Three structurally similar Swedish cities are compared. The results show that, the more market orientated local housing policy and the less “mixed housing” is, the stronger residential segregation. One planning implication seems to be that the development of housing segregation according to class and income, indeed, may be influenced by local planning. If desegregation is given a high priority in a city, housing production should be directed to accomplish this aim.     

Low income home ownership: The privatisation of squalor or the great Australian dream?

Owning a home brings with it responsibility for meeting repair and renovation costs. Under a special low‐start loan scheme of the Victorian Ministry of Housing and Construction, many public and private renters are joining the ranks of Australian home owners. Using data gathered from the Australian Institute of Family Studies five year Capital Indexed Loan (CAPIL) Evaluation Study, this paper examines the home repair and renovation activity of a group of Victorian low income families and specifically attempts to distinguish between repairs and home improvements. The findings suggest that while 87 per cent of families involved themselves in some form of home activity in the two year period since moving into their home, home improvements occurred three times more frequently than basic repairs. Only about 17 per cent of the families reported structural, plumbing or heating work, defined as necessary repairs in the analysis. A combination of choice and necessity appeared to determine average expenditures on home repairs and improvements: property age, family income and place of birth consistently emerged as significant in the multiple analysis of variance. Older properties consumed more outlays on repairs and improvements, regardless of family income or birthplace of respondent. Families from Australia's traditional migrant groups (United Kingdom, Greece, Italy and other European countries) expended more on repair and improvement than either the Australian‐born or, more recently arrived, Asian migrants. And the consistently greater expenditure of the relatively better‐off CAPIL families suggests that to a large extent disposable income is being put into home improvements. Taken altogether, expenditures on repairs and home improvements increased average monthly housing costs by 25 per cent: repairs specifically added about 5 per cent whilst home improvements raised housing costs an extra 20 per cent. The author observes that Australia's relatively young housing stock at this stage prevents the ‘privatising of squalor’ reported in British studies.     

'Blacks in near‐ghettos?’ black visible minority population in metropolitan Toronto housing authority public housing units

Concern has been expressed in Toronto since the 1970s about the ‘ghettoisation’ of black tenants in Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority (MTHA) public housing. Very little specific evidence exists, however, about the incidence of blacks in MTHA housing. The objectives of the present study are to provide a more detailed perspective on the incidence of blacks in MTHA housing compared to the rest of Toronto and the segregation of blacks within the MTHA system. The results indicate that the proportion of black tenants in MTHA housing increased from 4.2 per cent in 1971 to 27.4 per cent in 1986, a much greater increase than for blacks in the rest of Toronto. Explanations include the recent black Caribbean immigration to Toronto, income constraints, family composition and supply, cost and discriminatory constraints in Toronto's rental housing market. The evidence also suggests that there is some concentration of blacks within MTHA housing, especially in suburban high rise developments. The most likely explanation is a form of ‘constrained choice’.     

Spatial Segregation in Seven Cities: A Longitudinal Study of Home Ownership, 1971-91

Globalisation has been associated with the development of 'command node' cities in the global economy (Friedman, 1986; Sassen, 1991). Some scholars have argued that the social and spatial structure of such cities has been polarised, because of changing demand for labour and land. A number of debates have developed around this hypothesis, challenging the general applicability of these socio-economic trends to all global cities (e.g. Bruegel, 1996; Hamnett, 1996), while the spatial changes in the housing markets of global cities have been shown to be varied (Marcuse & van Kempen, 2000). They are heavily dependent on local context, but always associated with increased segregation of rich and poor, whether through displacement of the poor from the urban core (Smith, 1989) or through their displacement within it (Lyons, 1996). The present paper suggests that much can be learnt about urban change in an era of globalisation, from analysis of the differences between global and other cities. The hypothesis is that spatial restructuring of housing markets in London, a global city, is likely to have important similarities with those of other cities in England, which occupy lower positions in a global urban hierarchy. A comparison of the extent of socio-spatial clustering of home ownership in London, with six English cities at various levels of the urban hierarchy is presented, which partly supports the hypothesis, comparing change over a 20-year period, based on cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of ONS Longitudinal Study data for the years 1971, 1981 and 1991. Findings were that, despite its more socially polarised labour market, London's home ownership market was less spatially segregated than that of other cities in the sample. Implications for global city theory, and for the interpretation of the dynamics of other urban markets, are discussed.     

Muslim Residential Clustering and Political Radicalism

Through a review of the academic literature and the popular press there is considerable support for the concerns of politicians about Muslim segregation in European cities. First, the levels of segregation in many cities remain high and the boundaries of residential concentrations are expanding. Second, because segregation is primarily voluntary in nature reflecting strong ties to Islam this makes government intervention difficult. Third, although the terrorism/rioting link to segregation is weak, Muslim residential clustering does appear to be retarding cultural integration through the absence of social networks connected to the economic mainstream and peer pressure to retain religious customs antithetical to the new host society. Finally, policies to directly reduce ethnic segregation through housing allocation—benign quotas and ethnic dispersal—are as unpopular in Europe as they are in the US.     

Ethnic Residential Clusters in Nima,Ghana

The global debate on ethnic residential segregation has focused more on the developed world, and little is known about similar patterns and processes in African cities. This is in spite of the fact that many African cities are now ranked among the world’s most rapidly growing and least regulated urban areas. Indeed, the dynamics of ethnic residential segregation have scarcely been studied in African cities. The little literature available has looked at ethnic segregation between the neighbourhoods of major cities. This paper goes beyond current literature by examining the pattern and processes of ethnic clustering within a multi-ethnic community. Our goal in this paper is to answer the question as to whether within a multi-ethnic urban neighbourhood the major ethnic groups are residentially clustered, isolated or dispersed. The focus is on Nima, a major slum community of Accra, Ghana. The findings of the study show that even though Nima is a multi-ethnic community, some level of ethnic clustering can be discerned. These patterns are linked to the history of settlement formation, religious affiliation and ethnic or place of origin of earlier house owners.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

ARCHITECTURAL ANARCHY: Self-help Opportunities for the Homeless

This account of public squatting in empty buildings on Sydney's busiest main street commences without rage at such an anarchist act(“Theft!” cries South Sydney Mayor, John Fowler).Through persistent efforts,this provocative action by thirty young members of the Sydney Housing Action Collective (SHAC) has matured to gain wide support. Negotiations continue to build a potential model for the relief of episodic homelessness based on the temporary caretaking occupation of vacant buildings prior to development.

“It is only in a society where we have a government working day and night in our behalf that the housing problems are insoluble.”¹     

Understanding Infill: Towards New Policy and Practice for Urban Regeneration in the Established Suburbs of Australia's Cities

A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australia's second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.     

A Survey of Institutional Investors' Attitudes and Perceptions of Residential Property: The Swiss,Dutch and Swedish Cases

This paper provides evidence about institutional investors' attitudes and perceptions of residential property as an investment asset group in three European countries (Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden). These countries stand out, with an extraordinarily large institutional residential ownership, in fact, residential institutional allocation represents about 6 per cent, 2 per cent and 3 per cent of the total institutional investment in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden, respectively. Housing is the most important institutional property asset type in Switzerland and the Netherlands, comprising over 52 per cent and 50 per cent of their institutional property portfolios, respectively. In Sweden residential property plays an important, but not dominant role in the domestic institutional property portfolios, representing about 21 per cent of the institutional property holdings. Using a postal survey of representatives of pension funds, insurance companies, property investment and asset management companies the study analyses the attractiveness of residential property in terms of institutional investment goals. The survey examines the institutional investors' perceptions of housing investment, namely with respect to its returns, volatility, inflation hedging, liabilities matching and correlation with shares, bonds and non-residential property. Additionally, the survey looks at the institutional investors' experiences regarding the private rented sector. The survey suggests that investment in residential property equity is likely to be done through larger portfolios, which tend to invest in housing directly. Residential property is seen mainly as an earning asset group able to provide diversification benefits for investors even when portfolios already include non-residential property. The respondents are mainly concerned with rent regulation issues, the lack of well-structured investment vehicles is undoubtedly a less important problem.