Interesting article in the SMH today about the differences between inner city and suburban living. Sydney and Melbourne definitely have the urban thing going – with a range of inner city and beachside suburbs full of life and each with its own distinct feel (think St. Kilda vs. Brunswick or Bondi vs. Newtown). In Brisbane and Adelaide, there are very few parts of town that have a genuine urban feel (I’ve not been to Perth and haven’t been to Hobart for a long time and Canberra is kinda sui generis). In ‘Vegas, there’s really only West End and New Farm (counting the Valley as sort of a northern extension of the CBD) and perhaps to a lesser extent parts of Paddo and Bulimba). When my flatmate moved out to live with her partner in Albion (3 train stops from the City), she found it a lot more suburban than she’d expected.
Round where I live in New Farm, there are constantly people walking down my (side) street – nicely lined with huge fig trees, people coming home from clubs in the early hours about 4 nights a week, a big lesbian and gay population, lots of homeless and Indigenous people (far more on the streets sadly since gentrification demolished so many boarding houses), a plethora of bars, coffee shops, restaurants, the excellent Merthyr Bowls Club on the river, great parks, two bookshops, and basically all sorts of good things and a nice heterogenous community feel combined with endless opportunities for people watching. Lots of Galleries, a cinema, and the fabulous Brisbane Powerhouse, not to mention the riverwalk and the Story Bridge (pictured at the top of this blog) within easy strolling distance. Good public transport and no need to get a cab back from the Valley bars and pubs. It’s also arguably a far more safe environment when it comes to crime than many outer suburbs.
In my adult life, I’ve lived a large part of the time in West End/Highgate Hill/Annerley and here down on the Farm for the last three and a bit years. Yet sometimes I do a bit of suburban dreaming. I don’t think I’d like living in the ‘burbs though.
The nice thing about Brisbane inner citydom compared to Melbourne or Sydney is that because we never did the Terrace House thing and most of the houses are on big blocks with back yards, it’s a lot more leafy than the classic inner city area. And we’ve got lots of asian gekkoes for company!
Naturally, being a “leafy suburb” we have a Labor Councillor, State MP (Peter Beattie) and Federal MP.
I’d be interested to hear from readers about what they think of inner urban vs. suburban living. Is there a particular time in your life when you start feeling suburban? What are the respective joys and demerits?
Incidentally, I’m looking for a flatmate. If you’re interested, or know anyone who is, get in touch at mbahnisch [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ve lived with women mostly so am fully house trained and rant a lot less about politics and religion than you might expect!
I wouldn’t live anywhere but the innner city – Carlton has just about everything I want within walking distance – but it does have its irritations. Last night for example, one of my neighbours decided that their party would be better if they had their own band. They were four blocks down the lane my bedroom overlooks, but even with ear plugs there was no way I could have slept through it. I just managed it in the spare room – which overlooks four lanes of traffic and a tram line, but was much quieter.
And then there is violence. Four times since I moved to this apartment in late 1999 someone has decided to fire a gun at a location less than 10 minutes walk away, and once just across the road (I heard the shots, but thought it was a car backfiring until all the sirens seemed to be stopping nearby). Overall in the four incidents, one dead, two injured, and some very frightened restaurant patrons after a drive-by shooting that missed them all.
In twenty plus years growing up in the suburbs I never experienced anything like this. But I won’t ever go back.
I lived in the suburbs when growing up and thru uni. I have no intention of living in the suburbs again, children or no children. Part of the reason being I’d hate to live anywhere where you’d need to drive to get around as I have no interest in ever learning to drive. I like to live in a place where I can walk to almost anywhere I want to go. Secondly of course is the fact that it’s simply more fun living in the inner city, easier access to live music venues, arthouse cinemas, cafes and all the other pleasures of modern life. Thirdly is the safety thing you mentioned. Greater population density equals more safety – it’s easier to tolerate raving mad winos and junkies (as one tends to get in Oxford St) in vicinity when there’s at least a dozen people around you at the same time. Plus I do genuinely like the colour and heterogeneity of the crowd. The other issue is for me a lack of any genuine costs – I’m not particularly turned on by greenery and therefore don’t miss it at all, and there’s always Hyde Park if I get the odd urge.
I live in Potts Point just off the Cross; for twenty years I’ve lived in Woolloomooloo/Darlinghurst/Potts Point. I don’t think I could live anywhere else. I think the whole urban/suburban thing is completely relative – I dream of escaping to the suburbia of Clovelly.
As for Brisbane, I may have to move there later this year. I spent my first fifteen years of my life living in the Bulimba area, I understand now it’s … ahhh .. gentrified. What sort of area would be best to live in if you work at UQ? I was thinking Toowong?
I can sympathise with you Jason, I haven’t had a licence for more than ten years, nor a car for fifteen. But I think that living in Brisvegas, means a car, I don’t see how you can escape it.
I used to live in Balmain and loved it. Great pubs, great eating, great lifestyle. Only problem was I lived close the P&O wharves so it got noisy at night. Then just after I moved they closed the wharves down.
Now I live on the Central Coast where you can fly a Nazi flag in blissful ignorance. The area I live in (East Gosford) is in a state of flux. The elderly population is declining and in their place young couples/families are moving in. The flow on is that cool cafes and resturants are opening in the area (it is a small area but some very nice places to eat).
The downside is that many people on the Central Coast live on less than $300 per week. The main street of Gosford can be depressing. On the other hand it is an easy run up to Terrigal which is like Balmain by the sea. But the commute to North Sydney is about 1 hour 20 by train or anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes depending on traffic and idiots on the road.
But the thing is when I cross the Hawkesbury River on Friday it feels like I am on holiday. I like being close to the water (as we are not far from Brisbane Waters – a real estate agent would say that we have water glimpses). And it was nice to have a beer watching the Eels flog the Tigers on Foxtel and seeing the moon rise over the ocean from my Beloved’s parents’ house. So life is not bad outside the inner city.
I only feel secure in the inner suburbs. I grew up in Italian cities where the concept of a CBD and a ’suburb’ where you live and sleep does not exist. I was used of going out of home and always find shops, transport etc.
In Australia my father, being in a senior management position decides that he needs a house in the north shore of Sydney, with a swimming pool. This hightened my sense of isolation. Not only I was in a new country, but I was surrounded by these beautiful houses…and that was all. (It was Castlecove in Sydney btw). Not knowing much English, being a teenager not being able to get a licence and a bus who would take you to Chatswood station every two hours I felt incredebly alienated.
Then we had to move to Melbourne where my sister moved with her new husband. She lived in Carlton and my mother wanted to live near her. It was the late 70’s and my parents bought a terrace house which was painted in all primary colours: Blue with yellow. Green with red in the bathroom.
I loved it. And I loved the fact that again, I could walk out and have shops, transport etc. After that I moved to Fitzroy, then Brunswick and now I am in Northcote. I haven’t moved more than 6 Km. from the CBD.
I got a child and I have no sense to move to the suburbs because of him. As someone who grew up in an apartment, I see our small courtyard and the park nearby as a great luxury.
It is always quite interesting to see committed inner suburban dwellers getting the call of the quarter acre block immediately after they have a child. I guess that is where most Australian have grown up and that is where they think their children should grow up as well. While I think that my six year old might be happy to live in the burbs now, I suspect he will be grateful that he can walk to the train station and be in the city in 8 minutes when he is a teenager.
Of course the call of the suburbs is still strong for my partner as she grew up in leafy hippy Eltham. NAd she would ultimately want to get back there. Hopefully I may have to do that only when my son leaves home.
I guess that there is one thing that I feel sad about the inner suburbs. That when I started to live in them they had more migrants, more ‘less affluent’ people. But now prices have gone up so much that most of the houses seems to be inhabited by singles or young couples earning squillions.
Rex, no you don’t need a car to live in Brisbane. I’ve never had one. Bulimba has been gentrified to a large degree – some of the highest house prices anywhere now. Nice strip of restaurants, two bookshops, shops and coffee shops along Oxford St these days. And you can run into Mr Rudd doing his constituent gladhanding thing on the weekends, should that be your inclination.
I lived at St. Lucia for 3 years, and it’s not the best place to live. Toowong’s better – train provides 10 minute access to the city – good shops and restaurants and 5 mins away from UQ by bus. When I worked at UQ, I lived where I do now – at New Farm – and got to work in 30 mins on the Citycat (large catamaran) ferry – they’re excellent additions to Brisbane public transport – date back to 96 – and a very nice and scenic and relaxing way to go to and from work. Here, you can walk into the city in about 20 mins – though that’s a big ask in Summer.
I grew up in the country until I was 18 and live in the inner west of Sydney(The Peoples Republic of Marrickville). I *cannot stand* the suburbs. My sister used to live in Beecroft and it made me very uncomfortable when I went to visit. I’m not really sure why, the distance from things certainly is a practical consideration but perhaps the relative conspicuous affluence plays a psychological trick, can’t quite pin it down.
Anyway, I hate it. Where I live now is quite leafy really, the desc. of New Farm sounds very familiar. I will live in the inner city or the other side of the Great Dividing Range, and no where in between.
Mark, weren’t you talking about moving to Sydney at some point?
Yes, Amanda, because I applied for a job in Sydney – which I didn’t get. Quite happy in Brisbane but if I needed to move interstate for work, I’d consider it depending on the job.
I am as suburban as Bon Jovi and V8 Falcons.
Living in the inner-west of Sydney now is cool, but I don’t associate it with a sub/urban divide, more a Perth-Sydney thing. But it is weird as there is an anti-anti-pretentiousness around here. Like the differences don’t ‘really’ matter, but we have to bring them up to get them out of the way…
Perhaps something that urbanites do not realise is the specific sophistication required for existing successfully in the suburbs? Not sure. I am a bit hungover this morning. Brain is so not working properly.
I will speak for the suburbs. I lived in New Farm for three years, and Enmore for four. There are lots of things I miss, like having an organic food-coop on the corner, and a pub over the road. But there is no way we could have stayed in the inner city and not put my son in daycare far earlier than I wanted.
In the suburbs I work a bit here and there, we’ve got a big backyard, and chooks, and a veggie garden, and a big dog and I can ride my bike (which I wouldn’t do in the inner west).
OTOH, I never once heard a leafblower in Enmore.
I am in St Kilda, but when the landlady dies I will have to shift out, like nearly everyone I know. Bastards are boogying the joint up, although I think people here have not really got the idea of high density in the way they have in Kings Cross, with the ability to insulate comfort and wealth from the tackiness six floors below.
Then again, St Kilda is actually a biiig suburb, stretching out across a couple of kilometres of walk up flats like Bondi squished out on toast.
On the rare times these days I get to travel for work, I often notice the rise of the insta-latte strips, where standardised bits of grey green fretwork are clipped together on a concrete slab to provide coffee at least from the right machine and bacon from the better side of the supermarket cooler. Oh look, I think, you can have a decent breakfast anywhere, but its not the same because its not tucked into refurbs of buildings that used to have real workers sweat in them, or have enough reinforced concrete to feel like a medieval lump. I think its partly to do with sitting inside the umbra of a genuine thermal mass.
I have managed all my life to maintain myself inside a ten km radius from the middle, even in London. Bicycle distance, although I often run a car, mostly for the convenience of family transport needs. But I like a house rather than a flat – my parents strove for a long time to get out of flats into a “real home” and I inherited that. Still, I will probably stay in flats because houses of course inside the ten km limit are astronomically expensive.
I also notice that suburb is code for gardening, which is a soul enhancing activity that keeps our parents young – or did until recently since the boomers’ olds are pretty elderly. Some of them fought back with knee pads, silently thanking the kids on roller blades.
The thing I miss about a garden is the ability to eat privately outside. I love it, which is why boomer lawyers and academics bought all those terrace joints with courtyard gardens. They are perfect in that way as long as they brought their compass when they decided to buy.
For a while, when we had stable cash coming in, we were able to sustain a rented flat in town and a house in the bush. That was perfect, because it punctuated friday night and separated work from the weekend. Now the whole thing flows together and I am writing a comment on sunday afternoon, and I will go on to the market and then summarise a script and remember dimly it is a long weekend. Then again, I love to write.
Spare a thought for those poor souls who are compelled to live in Canberra, where there is no inner urban living. Twenty seven or so suburbs in search of a city, inhabited by three public servants and a dog.
Hey Rob, I live in Canberra. It is, as I have said before, the Scandinavia of Australia and a thoroughly marvellous place.
Rob you live in Alice Springs (I hope I’ve got the right Rob). Inner city living is the Todd River. It’s not a desirable location. Canberra is miles better than Alice Springs. At least there is more than K-mart in Canberra.
The appeal of walking everywhere is strong. I have lived in the inner west of Sydney since 1997 – although Strathfield is arguably a bit far west. One of the most attractive things is the Quarters ie Leichhardt is Italian, Petersham is Portuguese, China town, Enmore/Marrackville is significantly Greek and Lebanese, Ashfield is quite Chinese too, (Strathfield Korean).
I live in Newtown now and if I feel like being a tourist for a while I can simply wander out into another Quarter – perhaps happily buzzing with a drug of choice. The burbs are too uniform for this sort of pasttime. Also, the Eastern Beaches are close enough to simply ‘duck down’ for a dip.
I can’t conceive of living anywhere else. It is simply too convenient to everything I like doing. In February a short cab ride enabled me to set up a seafood/cheese/fruit/wine dinner for English relos and we watched the sun sink behind the bridge and Opera House. It is deliciously easy to get inspiration and fire up the brain in this part of town.
Long live living, if living can be this.
Nah, it’s nice for a visit harry, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Too many people too many cars too claustrophobic. Mind you, if we were forced back to Sydney we’d live around Glebe or somewhere so D didn’t have to commute for over an hour each day. That sucked.
Mindy, I’m in Alice now but I had 10 years in Canberra. The best thing about Canberra is getting out of it. I’m not being mean, Zoe, I’m referring to the fact that 30 minutes out of the CBD you are in Namaji National Park, which was as beautiful as you can imagine before the fires hit a couple of years back. I love the old space tracking stations, too.
I’ve only been to Canberra once as an adult (did the tour of the National stuff twice as a kid) – for a conference in 02. I didn’t get to see much outside Civic and the ANU because I only had a few days but I was surprised by a few things – the delapidated public housing near the city centre and the number of homeless and poor people, how deserted the shopping malls were except when public servants had their breaks (and that it was so empty on Saturday morning people could play touch in the mall!), the lack of pubs, the fact that clubs only opened three nights a week, and the number of ps types who’d sit in wine bars and drop pollies’ names. And being a company town, the amount of space devoted by the local rag to PS matters. Also what I heard from locals about the rate of heroin addiction among youth.
On the plus side – great restaurants, excellent public transport, good bookshops, cool clothes shops, friendly people – and ANU is a beaut campus. Also a lot of natural beauty.
It did have a bit of a suburban feel rather than an urban one, though.
Emphasising again it was only a few days and I didn’t see all that much. I was told to go over and check out Manukah but didn’t get around to it.
“The best thing about Canberra is getting out of it.”
Also true for Alice. Apart from the majestic waterway, Alice is, well, a bit like Tuggeranong. [Sorry outsiders: Canberra joke]
I think a lot of the public housing may be gone or going now, but apart from that you got it pretty well. When we lived there we found the reason why Civic was so deserted during the weekend was because everything you needed was in the burbs with lots more parking. And we got lazy, a 5 minute drive up Hindmarsh(? can’t remember anymore) to Woden was easier than 10 minutes (on the weekend) into Civic.
Mark, the Canberrans are very proud of Manuka. It’s only nasty ex-Melburnians who scoff at their claim that it’s the national capital’s equivalent of Lygon Street. Centre Road, Bentleigh, more like.
Civic is where the druggies hang out, especially near Impact Records. You get the occasional political demo there as well. I agree with Mark (aaagh!) that the ANU campus is superb. Good co-op bookshop there, too.
Rob’s right on Manukah. Vastly over-rated by the locals. Its restaurants are, however, better than the nostalgia nosh you get on Lygon St in Carlton. The best “Italian” restaurant there is the University Cafe, and it’s probably one of the few nosheries likely to survive the inexorable progress of Thai-restaurant disease crawling up Lygon St.
I live in Undercliffe, a hidden Sydney jewel on the Cooks River between Marrickville and Earlwood. I work in Darlinghurst so I’m kind of inner Sydney circumscribed. We’re innerubanati but kind of bucolic with it. We live on the river in a detached house with a sizeable garden, that was originally my partner’s grandparents home. They were resettled here in ‘the country’ from unhealthy terraced housing in Darlinghurst – how times change……
We’ve got funky, multiculti Marrickville up the road and slightly more self-consciously funky Newtown a bit further up the road. To the west the road climbs the sandstone ridge to rockgirt Earlwood, childhood home of John Howard and current home of the most triumphantly tacky Catholic church in Sydney – Our Lady of Lourdes – which features an unapologetically 1.5 times lifesize grotto representation of St Bernadette and Our Lady.
Manuka used to be our local shops when I was a little
boy – we lived in Forrest. There may have been a tearoom/cafe that sold egg sandwiches but I don’t remember any restaurants – chic or otherwise. I still feel faintly ridiculous sitting outside ‘the Manuka shops,’ dining alfresco, when I’m in Canberra…..
We have two Thai restaurants in Alice. One of them’s quite good, but not reliable (Hanuman). As I sit here I hear typing in the lee of the East MacDonnells, I hear through the window the tinkling sound of what must the last surviving ice-cream van in Australia. Just thought I’d share that Central Australian moment.
No it’s not Rob. Just this afternoon the strains of the ‘Happy Wanderer’ have wafted through the window from the ice cream van that visits Steel Park across the river in Marrickville. A Vietnamese guy operates it
Just goes to show that 10 years in Canberra leaves you numb to the everyday facts of life in the real world.
I live in northern New England, a country boy at heart and an escapee from Sydney (the Newtown road Uni college with toads on the spires) and much later a western Qld country Hicksville and Brisbane’s Stafford Heights. Up until a recent Brisbane visit to family where the multicultural West End family friendly, salt swimming boulevarde type pool and environs impressed be no end, I would have said that the best thing coming out of Brisbane was the Cunninghams Gap road south.
I came to a reversal of opinion while floating in the said pool and realised that the area of my floatation was probably worth at least 20K, a utilitarian result so contrary to usual inner city real estate sleaze and skulduggery. My question is, who was the benevolent creator there?
We have an icecream van that regularly visits our street, and so does Manas. They’re everywhere!
They probably have them in Canberra too, and I just never noticed. Ah well.
I’ll get back to my gloating over the train-wreck of socialism.
My god, Rob, they do. In my excitement I ran out just last week to buy one for Sage and his Dad. My decision to abstain turned out to be very wise, because it was just hot airy cream instead of proper icecream, and they all felt sick after.
And it cost me $9 for two of them. I thought I misheard the man and tried to give him 90 cents. Heh.
Well, I never saw them down in Theodore. [/sulks]
To the tune of Donna e mobile (Verdi, Rigoletto):
Way down in Theodore
In good old Theodore
There’s white-tailed spiders
Whose bite is nasty
The wound will never heal
The skin will never seal
And painnnnnn…… will dog all your days.
Hehe.
Peter, would you be referring to the beach at Southbank? It is, of course the old Expo site. Brisbane loved the Expo so much that when the site was redeveloped there was a great clamour for open public-access space.
There was another redevelopment a few years ago of the old railway yards at Roma St, turned into 16 hectares of quite impressive parkland at a cost of $72m. Hasn’t quite come to life yet.
Mark, there were a few terrace houses, notably in Coro Drive near Park Road now turned into offices. I lived there for a while as a student, in a ground floor flat out the back. It was about the worst time of my life. Dark and dingy, rising mould and damp, a noisy refrigerator through the ceiling above my pillow, and a loo (plus shower etc) up the stairs across a courtyard in the pouring rain at 3am.
There was another bunch of terrace houses, I think in Albion/Clayfield on Sandgate road, long demolished.
Can I put in a plug for the ‘burbs?
I live in Ashgrove, 24 years now after moving 14 times in the previous 28. It is 15 mins from the CBD and Brisvegas proper. Public transport is doable, but a car gives huge freedom. Five minutes to picnic areas in the Mt Coot-tha foothills, a few minutes longer to the summit, five minutes to the rolling hills of Anzac Park in Toowong, probably about 100 movie screens within 20 mins, including Bulimba, the Schonell at QU and the one Mark walks to. If you want to get out of the place you can easily strike out to the Sunshine Coast the Gold Coast, to Toowoomba etc. If we head due west we get to McAfee’s Lookout in 20 mins on the way to Mt Nebo/Mt Glorious. Bowman Park is 5 mins walk. We back onto bushland where there are walking and mountain bike trails. You could actually walk 300k in the bush crossing only 3 roads.
In our back yard on moonlit nights like this you could be in the bush and now we’ve got the deck the bush vista has opened up.
What I’m saying is that it is practically in the bush bush but 15-20 mins from most of what the inner city has to offer. But our place is so nice we don’t go out all that much.
And yes, we have an ice-cream man.
Brian, you mentioned Toowoonba. I love Toowoomba. I could easily live there. Fabulous place. Great old streets, some good restaurants (take a bit of finding) and fantastic views. Bliss. This inner-city living meme is a bit over-cooked, if you ask me.
Having enjoyed the inner city and the suburbs, I appreciate the advantages of both, which have been exhaustively itemised above. However, I’d like to squash the notion that, at least as far as Sydney is concerned, the inner city is more multi-cultural than the suburbs. Well, maybe the Northern Beaches aren’t such a melting pot, but I defy you to show me a more ethnically diverse region than Western Sydney.
Fyodor said” “Rob‚Äôs right on Manukah. Vastly over-rated by the locals. Its restaurants are, however, better than the nostalgia nosh you get on Lygon St in Carlton. The best “Italian” restaurant there is the University Cafe, and it‚Äôs probably one of the few nosheries likely to survive the inexorable progress of Thai-restaurant disease crawling up Lygon St.”
There are really two Lygon Sts – on the city side of Grattan St iit s just a tourist trap. So far as I can tell, all the restaurants there are mediocre and overpriced. Even at the other end of Lygon St the food is generally mediocre, but since it relies on repeat custom for locals not such a rip-off, if all you are after is what I call ‘Italian peasant fare’. The coffee, bookshops, and cinema are all very good though.
One of Lygon’s St’s problems, in my view, is that it has several car parks, which atract people from the suburbs with a 15-20 years out-of-date idea that Lygon St is the place for food. In fact there are many much better restaurants in the suburbs these days. But while they keep coming things won’t improve.
Rob, yes Toowoomba is an attractive place. All the larger provincial cities in Qld have their special character. Cities of 100,000 usually have good all-round facilities and a range of active social and cultural groups. I used to think there was a lot more interchange/communication across groups and social layers, particularly where there was a university, than you get in bigger and possibly also smaller places. In this respect Townsville and Cairns seemed more open and fluid than Toowoomba and Rockhampton, but I stress this was based on my own limited and subjective experience as a short-term periodic visitor.
On the inner-city theme, there was an interesting article a few weeks back demonstrating that large cities were more friendly to the environment than idyllic rural landscapes. He and his wife started out in New York where they walked everywhere and used about 4000kw of electricity per year. When they had a daughter they moved 150k out where they enjoyed the birds and the bears and lovely wooded landscapes. But they used 30,000kw of electricity pa, had three cars (one as a back-up) and used 8 litres of petrol to rent a video.
The compensation for the lack of urban living in Alice is that you’re in Albert Namatjira territory. I never properly realised what a great artist he was until I went out through the West Macs and saw the landscapes myself. Not all of his stuff is equally impressive but at his best he is the best.
By the way, we have the ice-cream vans in New Farm too.
I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney. I left 30 years ago but still get the complete creeps when I go back, even though they have changed a lot (schoolgirls now sit at outdoor cafes sipping cappucinos on their way home from school). I moved to the inner city, which was a revelation to me – walking and cycling everywhere, people on the street at all hours, a much higher sense of personal safety as a woman etc. Then I lived in London for a decade. When I returned to live in Sydney, it was crucial for my mental wellbeing to choose urban. I’ve lived in the inner east ever since. I have a child and am very glad that he is not growing up in the suburbs. He gets plenty of space in the large public parks (eg Centennial Park) – we hardly ever use our small car, we walk everywhere, we are 10 minutes away from several beaches, I can sit here at my desk in a quiet leafy (pretty) street but not feel alienated or isolated as I regularly see or hear another human being. My surroundings are (mostly) beautiful – no red brick houses or Hills hoists or paling fences or dessicated lawns. The only drawback is that our current house is on the small side, but our domestic outgoings are minimal – and we can always walk out the front door and enjoy what’s on offer just a few steps away! My idea of a mightmare would be being forced to live in suburbia again.