URBAN DYNAMICS

Sydney’s Beach Suburbs and Eastern Suburbs

Clovelly

Sydney CBD and Inner City Suburbs

Inner west

North Shore

Western Suburbs

South West Sydney

Definition

• Urban Dynamics: The processes for changes taking place in the spatial organisation of large cities.

• Morphology: the functional form and character of an urban environment

Processes shaping the morphology of large cities:

• Urban decay • Urban renewal• Suburbanisation• Exurbanisation• Counterurbanisation and

decentralisation• Urban consolidation• Urban villages• Spatial Exclusion

Urban Decay

• Is the deterioration of the urban environment. Urban infrastructure falls into a state of disrepair and buildings are left empty for long periods of time.

• Up to the mid-1960’s, the inner city of Sydney suffered from urban decay.

• Characteristics included: deterioration of residential areas, a decline in inner-city investment associated with the suburbanisation of manufacturing, warehousing, retail and offices.

Urban Renewal

• Since the 1960’s, residential deterioration has been reversed by the process of gentrification: the renovation and occupation of old terrace housing by younger, higher income earners (DINKS) and an increase in medium-to-high density housing.

• Other urban renewal initiatives have included Government investment projects e.g.

Pyrmont / Darling Harbour

Activities

• Answer questions 2-9, p176

• Answer questions 1-4 ‘Understanding the text’ and ‘Activities’ p178 (Land Economics and Landuse Change)

Answers to the questions

P176:2. (a) deterioration of residential areas (b) decline in inner-city investment3. Gentrification: the renovation and occupation of old houses by

younger, higher income earners4. It has promoted reinvestment in the inner-city, focusing on medium-

high density housing on sites once occupied by manufacturing and warehousing.

5. Centrifugal forces( congestion, lack of space, rising property prices) combined with centripetal forces (cheap and abundant land in the suburbs, low land taxes and infrastructure) have led to decentralisation of manufacturing and warehousing activities.

6. They required frequent contact with local buyers and other firms.

7. - Changes in factory production technology

- development of freeways

- ↓costs in trucking operations

8. Smaller warehouses scattered throughout the metropolitan region could be combines into a single, large, freeway oriented facility.

Production distribution was transformed from a centre-outward to a suburbia-inwards operation.

9. Manufacturing sector no longer protected (deregulation), therefore many were forced to close down.