How our cities work: essential lessons from lockdown

As Melbourne and Sydney roar back to life it might be tempting to forget all about the lockdowns of 2021. But the pandemic drew attention to vulnerabilities in our two biggest cities that often remain invisible. It would be foolish to ignore them.

Cities are always marked by differences of wealth and income. But the lockdowns shone new light on stark geographical inequalities in Melbourne and Sydney.

Nurses, and other essential workers, have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.Credit: Chris Hopkins

This is illustrated by the essential workers who kept our cities going during the crisis. Research by Alison Holloway from the consultancy SGS Economics and Planning found about 45 per cent of workers can be defined as essential and are required to travel for work (a little over half are men).

They’re employed in a mix of jobs across health and social services, education, freight and delivery, transport, police and emergency services, logistics, construction and some retail (especially supermarkets, food and beverages). Because they must leave home for their employment, essential workers and their families were exposed to greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

Essential workplaces became locations of high COVID-19 transmission.

“These are the workers who have been living with COVID-19 from the outset,” says Holloway’s report. “It is these groups, and their households, that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.”

More than half of female essential workers were employed in health and education – jobs highly exposed to COVID-19 infection.Credit: Getty Images

The pandemic has drawn attention to where our essential workers live. Holloway found that in Sydney it’s mostly in the city’s west and south-west, while in Melbourne, the highest proportion of essential workers reside in the north and west growth areas on the city’s outer edges. These locations also recorded a high share of infections during this year’s Delta outbreak. Sydney’s west and south-west also experienced the most stringent lockdown restrictions.

A key reason for the high concentration of essential workers in those places is the cost of housing.

A growing share of essential workers on middle and lower incomes has had little choice but to locate in outer metropolitan growth areas where housing is more affordable.

As a result, the inner and middle-ring neighbourhoods in our biggest cities have been gradually sapped of workers who provide many essential services, including nurses, teachers and police.

In parts of Melbourne and Sydney around 60 per cent of workers are in an essential job while in some inner suburbs of both cities the share is below 30 per cent.

Data from the last census showed the suburb home to Sydney’s greatest number of police officers was Glenmore Park near Penrith, about 55 kilometres west of the central business district.

The upshot? The property market dynamics of Sydney and Melbourne has been closely linked to the geography of the pandemic.

Holloway’s research also found essential workers tend to live in suburbs with less developed social infrastructure, fewer opportunities for social connection, less open space and fewer transport alternatives.

The long distance from job hubs also reduces employment options for those living in outer suburbs, especially women. Holloway says women consistently have higher levels of tertiary education than males in metropolitan areas but earn less than men in the same locations. But this gap is much larger for women living in growth areas. It suggests many are settling for low-skill jobs close to home, so they can attend to caring and other family responsibilities.

“Many women are in jobs that they are overqualified for and in purely economic terms that’s wasted productivity,” says Holloway. “We’re not making good use of a lot of talent.”

But there’s a deeper layer to the story. The analysis revealed a stark contrast between the types of jobs male and female essential workers do.

Around 60 per cent of male essential workers were employed in traditional industrial workplaces, such as factories, transport, logistics and construction.

Meanwhile, 53 per cent of female essential workers were employed in health and education – jobs highly exposed to COVID-19 infection.

“The experience of essential workers during the pandemic varied significantly by gender,” says Holloway. “Many women are in jobs that required them to travel for work and required them to interact with the community and live with COVID throughout the whole pandemic.”

Female essential workers were also found to be more generally dispersed across metropolitan areas of both Sydney and Melbourne than male essential workers.

“This tells us the city is not experienced the same by men and women and in public policy if we are not looking at things with a gendered lens we’re missing a lot of the story,” says Holloway.

Long before the pandemic, the gap between the haves and have-nots had been gradually widening in our biggest cities. A measure of regional income distribution published regularly by the Bureau of Statistics shows the distribution of income has become more unequal in both Melbourne and Sydney during the past decade.

The uneven effects of the pandemic across our big cities threatens to accelerate that trend.

Without effective policies to address these pressing urban inequalities the fault lines exposed by the crisis are set to widen.

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