Hobart traffic snarls a result of city growth

Bob Cotgrove explains the trends and developments in employment and travel that are shaping busy city lives everywhere

SINCE the end of World War II, people have been leaving cities to live in the suburbs.

The 1947 Census showed that of the greater Hobart urban population of 88,417, nearly two-thirds (56,640) lived in the Hobart LGA.

By 1971 the Hobart LGA’s proportion of the urban population had halved to onethird (52,426 out of an urban population of 150,855) and by 2016, despite strong growth in the non-central hillsides of Mt Nelson, Tolmans Hill and Mt

Stuart, to less than a quarter (50,439 out of 218,290).

Outer suburbs and communities beyond the urban boundary (the exurbs) are increasingly home to those having strong daily links to the urban area.

Current growth areas of urban Hobart’s population are Brighton/New Norfolk, Kingborough/Huonville and Clarence/Sorell.

Central areas remain important as the location of parliaments, major retailing and office headquarters, sporting stadia and cultural facilities. They attract visitors and tourists keen to see the sights and tick the place off their bucket lists.

The central area is also disproportionately the location for urban jobs, being the focus of the dendritic public transport network, especially for train and lightrail systems, as well as major high-rise office projects.

But increasingly central areas are not where people want to live except for those, such as students and rich retirees, willing to swap residential space for access to services. Residentially, central cities attract migrants, but this is temporary. Once newcomers become established and culturally integrated most choose to join the rush to the urban periphery.

The movement out of central cities to suburbs and exurbs is characteristic of all Australian capital cities and cities throughout the world.

The World Resources Institute despairs that cities in developing countries are spreading out rather than up, even though high-rise central living exacerbates the gulf between rich and poor.

The Guardian in Britain complains cities “sprawl when they should be densified”.

Forgive the pun, but the main factor driving this movement from dense inner city to low density suburban living is rising car ownership and use. The flexibility and

mobility of the car allows families to choose the best location for their most valuable investment, the family home, given their lifestyles and budgets.

Increasingly that means hillslopes, access to beaches and water, and affordable land at the periphery.

Where population goes, other land uses follow, albeit at a slower rate due to inertia.

Manufacturing was the first to go, trading crowded innercity factories for spacious sites in outer industrial parks where there was ample space for storage and parking.

Trucks enable firms to maintain links to suppliers and markets via road, sea, air and rail terminals. Retailing and small offices moved to new shopping centres with easy access for customers and clients.

Most new suburbs have primary schools, and as the population grows, high schools. But there is no reason why the growth areas should not have hospitals for routine accident and emergency purposes, leaving specialist services to remain in central areas, plus university campuses, libraries and cultural facilities.

Trends such as working from home are starting to balance the disparity between population and location of employment that creates the unnecessary daily tidal traffic movements of commuters flocking to the city centre in the morning and heading back to the suburbs late afternoon.

But governments could and should do more to relocate jobs from the centre to the suburbs as the best way to reduce traffic congestion.

Bob Cotgrove is an urban geographer and transport economist with interests in land use and travel patterns of postindustrial societies.

A former UTAS lecturer he holds four degrees; BA(Hons) MTransEc and BDC from UTAS and MSc(Econ) from University College London.