Shift from the cities ‘is just a sugar hit’

Don’t believe the hype around the COVID-19-led shift to the regions because Australians will overwhelmingly stick to where the jobs are.

Brett and Jocelyn Williams with kids Mack, 6, and Jax, 8, at Main Beach in Byron Bay. Picture: Luke Marsden.

Don’t believe the hype around the big COVID-19-led shift to the regions, urban planner Shane Geha says, because Australians will overwhelmingly stick to where the jobs are.

Big cities simply have too much going for them to stop being the go-to place to live, and if high property prices were that much of a deterrent, the regional shift would have been greater ­already, Dr Geha said.

An adjunct professor at UNSW, Dr Geha said while a tree-change might work longer term for those about to retire, many people who were moving because they thought remote working was the new normal might find themselves returning to the cities.

Only when regional cities like Ballarat in Victoria or Wollongong south of Sydney reach a critical population mass of about one million people will they be able to generate their own employment ecosystems and sustainably draw people from the capitals, he said.

“What’s happening at the ­moment is a sugar hit to the ­regions,” Dr Geha said.

“The fundamental reason why 70 per cent of Australians live in the big six cities hasn’t been changed by COVID. They have the jobs and they have the ser­vices people want.

“We can’t be lulled into creating incentives for growing the regions when it is more important to get the infrastructure settings right for our cities. This is where most people want to be and there’s a reason for that — it is where the work is.

“Think about Wollongong, the closest regional centre to Sydney, 90km down the road. It’s beautiful, with great beaches and cheaper property prices. But there’s a very good reason it is the size it is, and won’t change much due to COVID. It’s because the jobs are in Sydney,” he said.

“Even if you want to make a change to the regions and your job is able to be performed to a large extent remotely, there are still significant impediments, such as whether your partner can manage a similar transition, whether there are good schools for your kids.

“And if you are a young person, where would you rather be living — Cowra or Bondi?”

The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures published in February reveal a net loss of 11,200 people from capital cities in the September 2020 quarter to internal migration, the largest quarterly net loss on record.

Most of this net decrease came from people opting not to move into the cities from the regions rather than people leaving cities for the regions, the report notes.

Dr Geha said the COVID-19 lockdown would have changed the nature of work permanently for a few but not the majority.

“If you take a five-year view of this, most people will find themselves back working in a collaborative environment such as an office. I think it’s what employers want.”

He said the real potential catalyst for change was a fast train between Sydney and Melbourne.

This had the opportunity to create three or four significant regional hubs that could attract future populations of more than a million people, but that would happen only when Sydney reached eight million and Melbourne seven million.

“It is case that if the fast train can be paid for and be well patronised, then the regions will prosper. People are always the answer to every human problem,” he said.

Last month, Infrastructure Australia, the independent adviser to government on key infrastructure projects, outlined a new approach to assessing proposals in regional areas that took into account the urban exodus and the trend to stay on in the regions. More than half of a new priority list of investment opportunities IA has identified benefit regional communities. This represents a change from the usual mix, which favoured congestion-busting projects in the cities.