Where will you be living in 2030? | 4BC and ABC
Australia’s psyche has been partially built on wide open spaces, the quarter acre block and the backyard, but by 2030 this will be more myth than reality.
We are expecting two (2) million more Ozzie’s over the next few decades, this coupled with changing economic conditions and declining house affordability has led to a changing housing landscape and a changing of the great Australian dream of owning a quarter acre of golden Australian soil.
By 2030 owning a double story house sitting majestically on a 1/4 acres will be a sign of wealth, or of forebears having purchased in previous “good times”. Instead many of us will move into apartments, learn to love smaller rooms and share communal outdoor spaces.
It’s interesting to track and contrast the evolution of migrants into Australia, who often through necessity and lack of disposable income, would start a business and live above the shop to save a few quid. In this earlier romantic time, the sign of having achieved was to leave the flat above the shop and move into a standalone dwelling.
Today we’re doing the opposite. We’re leaving the standalone dwelling, often because of lack of disposable income and moving to an apartment (no longer called a flat) above retail shops or mixed use medium or high density buildings and marketing this as “trendy” and “desirable”.
In a recent foresight strategy session with one of my large commercial / residential developer client we spoke of what they might be building in the next decade and beyond, what those spaces may look like, who will be living and working in them and what residents will want their multi-purpose home spaces to offer them.
This discussion is soaked in an understanding of the changing demographics, changing workstyle where increasingly we will work where and when is appropriate which will require our work and home spaces to do double duty, or if they are specialist work spaces to be extraordinary and inspiring work palaces.
These new buildings will be dripping in technology that monitors and adjusts physical space to our every whim and makes smaller spaces seem virtually much larger and more accommodating.
In this week radio segments I also looked at the possibility of growing satellite cities between our capital cities, the future of low to medium density mixed purpose buildings springing up around existing infrastructure and transportation and even dabbled into some of the technologies that may be building our homes, apartments and commercial building of tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Or7A5w4ZE
So have a listen to the segments now, share it around with your friends and then lets chat about the cities and houses we want to live in, in 2030 and beyond.
4BC – Clare Blake (15 minutes 29 secs)
ABC Wide Bay (7 mins 10 secs)
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the strongest signals about where Australians will be living in 2030?
The signals about Australian settlement patterns through 2030 include: continued concentration in major east coast cities, driven by economic opportunity, infrastructure, and professional network effects — the decades-long pattern of Sydney and Melbourne growing as a share of national population was only temporarily disrupted by COVID-19 and is reasserting; growing density within major cities as the combination of housing cost and infill development pressure produces more apartment and medium-density living, particularly in inner and middle suburbs; continued growth in coastal and regional centres within commuting or easy travel distance of major cities, driven by remote and hybrid work flexibility and lifestyle preference; and climate-driven migration pressure that is still small in absolute terms but growing, with coastal flooding, extreme heat, and fire risk affecting property values and insurance availability in ways that are beginning to influence location decisions.
Q: How has the remote work shift changed the relationship between place and employment?
The remote work shift that accelerated during COVID-19 has produced genuine and durable changes to the relationship between place and employment, though not as radical as the most enthusiastic predictions: the proportion of knowledge workers who have at least some location flexibility in their work has increased substantially and appears relatively stable — the return-to-office pressure from many employers has reduced flexibility at the margin but has not returned to pre-pandemic norms; the economic geography premium for living near employment centres has reduced for some workers but not all — workers who need to be present multiple days per week still face significant commute cost; and the regional and coastal centres that grew during COVID have largely retained their growth, suggesting that the location flexibility has been partially but not fully reversed. The practical outcome is a wider range of viable locations for knowledge workers than existed pre-COVID, but not the wholesale geographic liberation that some 2020 projections suggested.
Q: What Ripple Effects™ of the housing crisis are shaping where Australians can realistically live?
The Ripple Effects™ of housing affordability on settlement patterns are significant and underexamined: workers in essential services (nurses, teachers, police, childcare workers) are increasingly priced out of the cities and inner suburbs where they are most needed, creating structural staffing challenges in urban services that are not primarily about wages but about the impossibility of living close to work on a public sector salary; young people are forming households later, in smaller configurations, and at greater distance from family and social networks than previous generations, with consequences for family formation, community connection, and mental health; and the rental insecurity experienced by a growing proportion of Australians creates a form of precarity that affects career decisions, family planning, and civic participation in ways that are beginning to show up in social indicators.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a urban futures, housing, or demographic change keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
Australia’s psyche has been partially built on wide open spaces, the quarter acre block and the backyard, but by 2030 this will be more myth than reality. We are expecting two (2) million more Ozzie’s over the next few decades, this coupled with changing economic conditions and d.
When signals like Where will you be living emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Where will you be living will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
