All photos taken by the author
Australia, internationally known for its iconic wildlife, natural beauty, and the sacrilege that is Vegemite, is a unique place in a unique corner of the world. Many view Australia as a fascinating mix of British and American influences synthesising on a desert island halfway across the globe, with some even jokingly calling it ‘British Texas’. Although Australia is much more than the alleged sum of its parts—an extensive history with the United Kingdom paired with plentiful deserts and a New World frontier mentality—examining its cities paints a surprising picture, suggesting that this nickname might hold more merit than it seems.
When British colonists conquered the continent and established large-scale settlements, significant inspiration was drawn from the colonial motherland and European urban planning paradigms, integrating walkable, dense urban cores and considerable public transport. By the late 19th century, Australian cities had been engulfed by industrialisation, rail networks, and urban density, particularly within the inner suburbs and city centres, which locals like to call Central Business Districts (abbreviated to ‘CBD’ in classic Aussie fashion).
With Australia achieving statehood in 1901, the nation began forging its own identity, and the reimagining of urban existence followed. Unlike the historical pressures that necessitated urban density in the Old World, the vast, habitable lands surrounding Australian cities, particularly after the horrific displacement of Aboriginal Australians, provided few obstacles to liberal urban sprawl. The absence of such spatial checks and balances effectively led to a cultural entitlement to sizable private property in Australian society, known as the ‘Australian Dream’. In addition, the vast majority of Australia’s urban infrastructure developed throughout the 20th century, which saw the widespread popularisation of the automobile. These factors significantly contributed to shaping the Australian approach to urban planning. As a result, similarly to the United States, Canada, and much of the New World, Australian cities became low-density, sprawling, and extremely car-dependent.
Nowadays, Australian cities are incredibly guilty of the ‘Missing Middle’ phenomenon, whereby a significant lack of medium-density housing creates a stark difference between high- and low-density neighbourhoods within the inner city. As a result, a glaring shortage of residential housing exists outside the ensuing binary of single-storey suburbia and towering highrises.
The lack of urban density plaguing Australia has been a major contributor to the housing affordability crisis sweeping the nation. The low supply of medium-density housing and consequent gentrification have priced out most demographics from renting or owning homes in the inner suburbs, spurring many to proclaim the death of the Australian Dream. Most local governments have chosen to expand outwards over expanding upwards by focusing their efforts on cities’ outer fringes where new developments star cookie-cutter suburbia utterly void of walkability. As such, potential homeowners are pushed further out, increasing travel distances and demand for private vehicle ownership, only perpetuating the problem.
Outside the CBDs and their immediate surroundings, density primarily exists around suburban train stations. These stations act as nodes that serve the suburbs’ commercial and administrative needs, with most shops, restaurants, and post offices residing nearby. Due to zoning practices present nationwide, these suburban centres tend to be the last bastions of walkability in a sea of single-story detached housing. However, even these centres rarely prioritise pedestrians. They are often inconvenient to navigate on foot due to slow pedestrian light changes and aggressive drivers regularly spawned by cities designed for motorists’ convenience. Instead of delivering various improvements to other transport infrastructure in desperate need of attention, Australian cities are taking the increasingly bold and counterproductive stance of allocating funding towards car infrastructure despite the inevitable induced demand it causes. Numerous freeway expansions in, for example, Adelaide and Perth act as telling examples, but roadwork is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unveiling the preferential treatment cars receive above all others.
Cycling is yet another mode of transport thwarted by Australia’s ever-present car infrastructure. Although many cities are home to an increasing number of bike lanes, they are still too intermittent for cycling to be viable as a primary mode of transport. Moreover, existing infrastructure is often unprotected and poorly marked, providing little safety from motorists, many of whom have developed significant anti-cyclist sentiment. A 2019 study found that around half of non-cyclists view cyclists as ‘less than fully human’, and a follow-up study reported that visible safety gear causes even more dehumanisation. For one of the few countries on the planet where biking without a helmet is a finable offence, this only serves to further disincentivise cycling. Although much needs to be done to procure any significant tick in its modal share in the future, local councils have slowly begun to recognise the value of bicycle infrastructure, even if the implementation has room to grow in most places.
An important component to note, however, is that completely bunching Australia in with the United States and Canada isn’t entirely accurate either. Australia maintained a closer relationship with the Commonwealth and European cultural attitudes lingered longer than in its North American counterparts, partly due to the significant post-war influx of European immigration. These factors, among others, arguably manifested in Australia’s continued outperformance of North American cities in one critical area: public transport. Australia’s two largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, are particularly accomplished within the New World context.
Many refer to Melbourne as Australia’s most European city, partly because it was the only city on the continent to retain its tram network, thanks to the then-chairman of the Melbourne Tramways Board. While other cities dismantled theirs by the 1960s due to the growing prioritisation of car infrastructure, Melbourne’s tram network evolved into the largest in the world. Accompanied by extensive suburban rail and bus services, Melbourne’s public transport system achieved a level of coverage that few New World cities have been able to replicate.
Nonetheless, the system is not without its faults. Even when putting aside its most glaring coverage failure, the infamous absence of an airport train line, much of the network’s user experience leaves room for improvement. Transit frequency is especially poor, with weekend evenings seeing some of the lowest frequencies in the world among comparable cities. Bunching, meaning delays causing transit vehicles on the same line to arrive back-to-back, is a common phenomenon. Cross-suburban travel is limited due to the hub-and-spoke design of Melbourne’s transport routes, whereby all light and heavy rail lines run through the CBD, creating significant inefficiencies and travel delays. Although a suburban rail loop is in the works, the completion estimate is still over a decade out.
Sydney, on the other hand, holds a different set of challenges. As one of Australia’s many cities that disbanded its tram network over half a century ago, the consequences on its metropolitan rail infrastructure persisted, and the metropolis began reaping what it sowed as it eventually started reintroducing light rail lines at the turn of the millennium. Consequently, buses have taken on a more prominent role in Sydney and other Australian cities than in Melbourne, resulting in little dedicated public transport infrastructure. That said, emerging trends in Sydney’s transport planning signal that the city is heavily invested in improving its rail services, as evidenced by the ongoing expansions to the new Sydney Metro, with the most recent development receiving high praise from residents and leaders alike.
Even then, the road to transit salvation will be a bumpy ride, as the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) movement has long played a significant role in urban (un)development throughout Australia. Sydney’s rail network, in particular, has paid the price for it. One of the most consequential instances involved the residents of Sydney’s Bondi Beach protesting to block a train line from being extended to the suburb. Nowadays, the world-famous tourist destination is served exclusively by crowded buses from Bondi Junction onwards, several kilometres from the waves many come to admire.
Sydney’s most recent magnum opus has undoubtedly been the pedestrianisation of its historical high street within the CBD: George Street. As the now-longest stretch of pedestrianised road in Australia, the boulevard has seen an incredible revitalisation after car traffic was replaced with a new light rail line and widened footpaths. George Street has seen reduced noise pollution, bolstered commerce and a revitalisation of community life, bringing undeniable benefits to the CBD’s atmosphere and character. Although similar projects have been proposed and discussed in other cities, some have gained more traction than others. Either way, the reversal of completed initiatives appears nigh on impossible, creating a promising outlook for Australia’s future urbanism.
Australia has managed to avoid many public transport pitfalls of which most U.S. and Canadian cities are guilty. However, public transport alone cannot cover up fundamentally unsustainable and unchecked sprawl. I like to analogise the problem as “applying a plaster over a stab wound”, alluding to the fact that the issue simply runs too deep for superficial solutions to come even close to addressing the underlying dilemma.
Car-centric urban planning has only been widely recognised as an error relatively recently, not only because of its detrimental impact on our climate and ecosystem but also due to its economic and psychological implications on our ever-urbanising civilisation. Even then, many Australians either see no issue or prefer the supposed conveniences of a car-dependent society. Only successful, well-communicated implementations of transformative urbanism can convince people and authorities of the value of challenging the car hegemony and working towards building truly liveable communities built to last. Although these fundamental issues are unlikely to be thoroughly addressed in the immediate future, Australia will inevitably find itself on a mission to prioritise man over machine once and for all—not because it should, but because it must.
