In recent years, the loss of industrial zoned areas and industrial jobs in the inner and middle suburbs of Australian cities has been a prominent feature of metropolitan planning policy. Some former industrial zones have been made available for residential purposes, while other areas have been opened up to a broader range of land uses, including offices and bulky goods retailing. These higher order uses typically can outbid traditional industrial uses such as storage warehouses, wholesalers, manufacturers and service industries, leading to a loss of traditional industrial employment but potentially a gain in overall employment.

One of the positives flowing out of a more diverse mix of employment uses in these older industrial areas is a more equal gender mix. Traditional industrial employment is heavily weighted towards jobs for men; to such a degree that it could be argued that old fashioned industrial zoning, that limits the mix of land uses, discriminates against women in those areas.

Take the inner / middle-western suburbs of Sydney as an example. The traditional industrial areas of Rosehill, Clyde and Silverwater are dominated by male employees, with men accounting for over 70% of all jobs in each of these areas. However, the more recent employment hotspots around Sydney, of Rhodes and Homebush, which have developed a sizable mixed use employment base in recent years, provide a much more balanced workforce in terms of gender.

The gender imbalance is even more pronounced in some of the more recently developed outer western industrial areas of the Sydney metropolitan area. And this is probably of greater concern as these regions on the periphery of Sydney often offer relatively few employment opportunities for local residents outside of the industrial zoned areas. These areas are the new location for logistics operations, linked as they are to new transport infrastructure. They represent a long-term structural shift of the industrial focus on Sydney.

The broader “employment lands” zoning being adopted in metropolitan planning tends to allow a more comprehensive mix of industrial and business uses, which should in turn reduce the gender imbalance. However, the process of change in some industrial heartland suburbs is slow, meaning that for the medium term, these areas will still have relatively few job opportunities for women.

The bottom line is that urban planning is a complex exercise that can have unforseen side effects on the labour market as well as patterns of retail spending and social services such as education and healthcare. A lesson for planners is to signal changes in urban planning regimes a long time in advance and avoid sudden changes of direction.

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