Australasian cities: urban change across Australia and New Zealand

This chapter discusses major cities in Australasia, a region of Oceania, located in the southern Pacific Ocean. It focuses on major cities in the region, and examines weighted towards Australian cities – in particular Sydney and Melbourne – which accommodate a substantial amount of the urban population in Australasia. The chapter focuses on topics related to population, economy and employment, housing and spatial inequality, and in so doing discusses key attributes of Australasian cities, including high rates of immigration and culturally diversity, concentrated economic performance and governance, low density built form, housing unaffordability, and social and economic divisions. Australian and New Zealand cities are the product of settler-colonialism and are sites of historical and ongoing connections and contestation for indigenous peoples. The size and structure of the economy differs considerably between Australian capital cities. The concentration of social housing in large estates across Australian cities has worked to concentrate social disadvantage.