Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
boost urban competitiveness, are consistent with the shift towards a neoliberal
political agenda.
Globalising the city
Another perspective on the shift from equity to efficiency goals is provided by
considering policy as attempting to globalise cities by positioning them within
global flows of people, finance, goods and services. Such understanding has been
used to justify major investment and infrastructure projects, accompanied by place
branding and marketing and the provision of incentives, including land and tax
breaks, to attract major global investors. The changing urban economy, characterised
by the proliferation of advanced services and knowledge-based industries,
has resulted in bifurcation between highly skilled, well-paid professional work and
low-paid, unstable, unskilled service jobs in those cities clamouring for or seeking
to retain global city status, including Sydney and Melbourne. By the late 1990s, in
such cities, house prices had already risen beyond the incomes of many people.
Gentrification, or the process by which urban neighbourhoods, usually the home
of low-income residents, become the focus of reinvestment and (re)settlement
by higher-income residents, is framed by some as urban renewal, but others see
it as displacement of poorer, vulnerable city residents and a reduction in their
opportunities to gain access to good quality urban areas. 14 Rising house prices
and rents also attract property speculation, which fuels further inflation. In turn,
‘the urban problem’ has been socially constructed as one of poor city residents
lacking the skills to compete in job markets and generate the means to look after
themselves–ajustificationforcuttingsocialwelfareprovisionbypromotingthe
moral imperative of self-improvement. Others critique this construction as a form
of social pathology, where people are blamed for their problems, rather than
relating these to inequities resulting from global processes, compounded by state
withdrawal of social welfare. In contrast, the public goods and services consumed
by the wealthier are rarely framed as welfare benefits. 15 For example, both public
housing for those in need and negative gearing tax concessions for the wealthy
are benefits, but the ways in which these are socially constructed indicates the
dominance of efficiency goals given public subsidy to encourage profit-making
from private property ownership. 16
Certainly the city needs to be considered as part of wider processes. Flows (such
as of investment and people), intervention by higher levels of government (targeted
at urban areas or not) or international policy transfer shape what goes on within
urban areas. But the urban remains distinctive as a political realm, with its everyday
struggles about public services, housing and infrastructure, along with conflicts
14 Lees 2003.
15 Cochrane 2007.
16 Holden 2018.
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