4:45 PM - 5:00 PM
★ [HTT34-10] GIS analysis of Australian urban social geography by using Census Table Builder Data designated by ABS
Keywords:GIS, Australia, Urban area, Sydney, Melbourne, metropolitan area
A body of literature about multi-cultural aspects in Australia can be found in the fields of international politics, international relations and Australian history as well as Australian geography. Diverse origins of immigrants had a great impact on the changing structure of metropolitan areas in Australia. Based on some previous studies, non-English speaking immigrants, e.g. Greek and Italian in the 1960s, tended to live in the suburbs located 10-15 km apart from the Melbourne metropolitan core. These suburban areas were relatively “less convenient area” in terms of public transportation, but newly developed area supported strongly by motorization. New university, huge industrial parks, distribution centres and relocated suburban offices have been established in these newly developed areas. Immigrants in 1960s could only find affordable houses in these “new suburbs,” resulted in the expansion of the metropolitan area. After 1990s and later, Australian cities are strongly affected by a “surge” of immigrants from Asian countries. They tended to live in the existed Asian communities located at the peripheries of the metropolitan area, much farther than “new suburbs.” Footscray in the west, Glen Waverley in the east and Springvale in the southeastern suburbs are typical examples of those communities. In this paper, I focused on the changing structure of Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas in terms of diverse origins of immigrants. A GIS-based mapping with “table-builder data” distributed by Australian Bureau of Statistics was used to identify the process. This paper not only provides a methodological innovation but also a new and practical contribution to urban-social process studies.