ABSTRACT
A torpid, muddy stream winds out to sea from the hills, through the centre of the city and the parklands. The city’s population is a little over a million, sprawled out some 70 kilometres along the coastline, mostly on suburban quarter-acre blocks that constitute the popular image of Australian home life. The eagle’s eye view afforded by demographic maps confirms these residential geographies of distinction. The overall picture in the city is one of stark income polarization. In the mid-nineteenth century the mansions to the immediate north of the city were cleaned by the women from the row-houses that were built to accommodate the male workforce for the brickworks and tanneries on the river flats. Subsequent governments combined public housing programs with low-interest first-home-owner loans offered by the State-owned bank. The rust belt is not all that matters in these cities, but its presence does more than strip residents of economic capacity and social wellbeing.
