BUILDING UPON THE FOUNDATIONS OF GENTRIFICATION: INNER-CITY HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA IN THE 1990s

Abstract

In three recent papers, Bourne has suggested that the rate of gentrification in Canadian cities will decline, for both demand and supply reasons, notwithstanding economic recovery in the mid- 1990s. This prognosis for Canadian cities is so much at odds with the activity currently being generated in the upper-income housing markets at the center of the five largest Australian cities that it invites further investigation. Evidence is presented of recovery in the inner-suburban terrace housing submarket, and what began as countercyclical investment in the Australian equivalent of the loft-conversion and condominium submarkets. This latest phase of residential revitalization in the inner city heralds a trend to higher-value, high-rise living at the center of Australian cities. By the early 1990s enough Australians had become conditioned to inner-area living to provide optimism about the underlying demand, while the projected yields brought condominium development into the realm of financial feasibility. But concerted government action also was necessary to prime the core-area market for residential project development at the time (1991–1993). This raises a series of interesting questions about the advisability of state governments pursuing a property-led development strategy in recovery when the Anglo-American experience suggests that it might be short-lived at best. Lastly, some consideration is given to the implications for gentrification research and theory of possible divergence through the 1990s in the experience of North American and Australian cities.