Where did first-time buyers live in the '80s? The places you dream about living now

One of the most common Baby Boomer responses to anyone who dares suggest that people trying to buy houses in 2016 have it somehow less than entirely easy, goes something like this: “Sure, we might have had negligible unemployment at a time when jobs for life were the norm and house prices were in the five figures, but we had to buy in less-than-desireable places and we gosh-darn put up with it.”

Where people tend to go very quiet is explaining exactly where those suburbs were, because it turns out that the nasty suburbs that previous generations made do with were, for the most part, pretty awesome and convenient.

The issue for home buyers now is that while population density has changed in Australia’s cities, and transport links are generally superior, time has remained stubbornly inflexible. The biggest challenge now for those looking for their first family home is that the most affordable suburbs are further away than ever.

Fascinatingly enough, though, this wasn’t always the case.

You might have reasonably assumed that the biggest cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth – all just slowly grew out from the centre as populations increased, but – as researchers from the University of Adelaide mapped out in a paper published in Australian Geographer in September – it turns out that sticking the poor people in the far-flung suburbs is a rather more recent development.

In the ’70s, middle-class Australians flocked to what were then considered the “outer suburbs”, where land was cheap and the dream of a house on a quarter-acre block with a front and back yard was easily realised.

Those suburbs are rarely considered so very outer these days, and the real shock is that when our forebears boast of so bravely tolerating their options, that’s not what they’re talking about. The cheap suburbs then are the hip suburbs now.

That’s because the fashion for big blocks in the boondocks led to our five biggest cities becoming “doughnut” cities. Populations were concentrated in the inner cities and outer suburbs, and the semi-industrial, inner suburban rings were low with population density.

This led to urban sprawl, the great horror of the ’80s town planner. And thus, the cheapest areas in the ’70s and ’80s. This became the focus of concentrated redevelopment – or, to put it another way, gentrification – which, in the ’90s, became those nasty, largely industrialised suburbs where all the poor people lived.

And while residential demographics have changed, employment demographics have not. The majority of jobs used to be in the CBD and surrounds, exactly as we see now. So if you were living in a crummy terrace in Redfern or Fitzroy, at least you could content yourself with the fact that it was easy to get around.

In the ’90s, places like Newtown in Sydney, Carlton in Melbourne, Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, Northbridge in Perth and Hindmarsh in Adelaide, which had been home to lower-income artists, immigrants, students and Indigenous communities, found their population squeezed out and sent further afield as former workers’ cottages started going for prices few workers could afford.

Which brings us to now, where the non-millionaire class have a unique one-two punch: the less-than-desirable suburbs are now generally a long way out and also low on services such as schools, shopping centres, public transport, thereby adding an exciting new level of inconvenience to living a long way from where most of the interesting stuff is going on.

And for those still working in the city, this also means a fundamental change in how Australian families are expected to operate.

In the ’70s, most parents could expect to be home when it was still light in summer and there was time to play with the kids, or help with homework. When mum and dad aren’t getting home until 8pm, having left before dawn to get to work by nine, when is the parenting meant to take place?

Similarly, spending hours crawling through traffic or rammed on an overfull bus or train carriage doesn’t exactly guarantee a relaxed, energetic partner ready to leap into their domestic responsibilities – but it seems a great way to ensure exhausted, stressed people, whose fuses are excitingly short for the scant hours before they pull into the driveway and start the whole thing again.

So sorry, condescending property owners quick to point out how much more resilient and self-sacrificing they were, buying in the cool suburbs where all the interesting things were happening and then watching their investment skyrocket: you’re comparing apples and expensive, distant, stress-inducing oranges.