DESCRIBE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND MORPHOLOGICAL ZONES IN SYDNEY
Sydney’s growth and development has been significantly affected by the physical
attributes of the site which influenced the pattern of economic and social zones in the
city during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Technological and economic changes in
the last 50 years have reversed some of these earlier trends but distinct social and
economic patterns can still be observed. Social structures in Sydney are based on
income and wealth which are reflected in the type of housing and location of housing
and other associated facilities that provide for high income households.
Sydney has a distinct west- east division of income and social class. Higher income
areas are concentrated on the north shore of the harbour, in parts if the Inner West and
the harbour suburbs east of the CBD. There are other pockets of higher than average
income especially river side suburbs along the Georges River and Port Hacking but
there is a strong clustering in the areas mentioned above.
In a similar way low income suburbs are clustered in the western suburbs around
Fairfield and Blacktown in the southwestern suburbs between Liverpool and
Campbelltown. These are areas of high unemployment, single parent families and a
clustering of public housing.
The older high income zones of the North Shore and Eastern Suburbs were attractive
to wealthy people because of the water/bush views and because they were away from
the poorer suburbs surrounding the CBD but with water access to the CBD. The
growth of transport infrastructure and especially the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening
in 1932 led to greater growth in these areas but they retained their high income status
and increasingly other services such as private schools and recreation facilities were
attracted to provide services to the population. These areas never established large
heavy manufacturing industrial areas. Although, more recently, high tech information
and media based industries have developed on the north shore, especially along the
Ryde to Pennant Hills corridor, the economy is based on commercial activities with
strong links to the CBD and the expanded commercial centres of North Sydney, St
Leonards and Chatswood..
In contrast, some of the more recent high income areas along the harbour west of the
CBD, such as Balmain, have changed their character substantially over the last 40
years. Balmain and surrounding inner west suburbs developed as industrial suburbs
intimately related to the nearby port facilities. The industrial character made them
attractive to NESB migrants, who provided the main workforce for industry in the
post war period. The association of Leichhardt with Italian migrants in the post war
period is an example of this.
The changes in shipping technology and the movement of the major port facilities to
Port Botany in the 1970’s coupled with the suburbanisation of industry allowed the
processes of gentrification and planned urban renewal to transform many inner
suburbs from low income industrial areas to middle to high income areas. The
economic base changed from industry and port facilities to commercial and
tourism/recreational facilities such as Star City, Darling Harbour and the restaurants
of Glebe Point road.
The rapid post-war population growth led to a rapid sprawl of the metropolitan area
westwards so that previously rural settlements such as Penrith and Campbelltown
became regional commercial centres on the edge of the city.
The western areas developed firstly as mainly dormitory residential suburbs both
through private and public housing developments. In the 1960’s the suburbanisation
of manufacturing began and from 1965 with the opening of Roselands, the
suburbanisation of retailing. Education, and particularly hospitals lagged behind and
are still more concentrated in the inner areas of Sydney.
The post war migration program attracted large numbers of migrants to Sydney.
NESB migrants concentrated in areas where manufacturing work was available as
English language skills were not so necessary in this kind of work and housing was
cheap. In the 1950’s and 1960’s this was in inner areas such as Marrickville and
Leichhardt but since the 1970’s the southwest LGA’s of Bankstown, Fairfield and
Liverpool have received the bulk of these migrants. Since the mid 1980’s the decline
of and restructuring of manufacturing has resulted in pockets of high unemployment
in these same areas. Consumer services have suburbanised and small businesses,
especially in retailing have replaced some of the lost manufacturing jobs.
The major economic growth in Sydney in the past 15 years has been associated with
Sydney’s growing role as a secondary world city. Job growth has been in specialised
services such as in the financial sector and business services to the growing number of
TNC’s locating their Asia- Pacific headquarters in Sydney; in transport especially air
transport and in tourism. These jobs have mainly been located in the CBD and inner
suburbs. At the same time there has been an increase in the number of residents
living within the CBD. For medium to high income earners without dependents living
in or near to the CBD has many advantages including access to employment. In
contrast, many workers in the CBD commute long distances to their workplaces either
because they choose to live in suburban areas or because they cannot afford to live in
reasonable proximity of the CBD. Some hotels in the CBD are finding it difficult to
attract low paid staff such as housemaids as the travel time and cost of travel from the
outer suburbs, where these workers live, don’t make it worth their while. There have
been statements and plans for Sydney that include the need to maintain lower income
housing in the inner suburbs but the housing market has been give free rein.
As a result of economic and technological changes and rapid population growth of
Sydney in the period since WW2, distinct patterns of income and wealth and
associated housing and services have developed within the metropolitan area. These
patterns also reflect other social factors such as occupation, family structures and
level of education. Government services, including hospitals and public transport,
have not kept up with the growth of the city and tend to be concentrated in the inner
and middle ring suburbs. The result is a secondary world city that has distinct
economic and social patterns associated with the urban dynamics that are actively
transforming the morphology of the city.