The First Suburban Nation in a Suburban World

Abstract

Australia is sometimes referred to as the first suburban nation. Little surprise, then, that it should exemplify a great variety of suburban forms and processes of suburbanisation. The popular appeal and egalitarian credentials of suburbia in Australia have ensured that the urban experience of this most urbanised of nations is a distinctly suburban one. The suburbs emerge here perhaps more so than anywhere else as central to the social, cultural and economic life of the nation. Australia and its suburbs specifically have as much as the UK or the US been a relay for international residential development models such as the bungalow and the condominium. Yet Australia historically has also proli..