20 replies to this topic

[tomahawkn]

I'm always happy to see pictures of Australian cities, they are all beautiful in their own rights and I would love to visit someday.  One thing I never see, though, are pics of the bad areas of these cities.  I'm interested if anyone has some pictures of Australian ghettos or poor areas.  The not so pretty sections of town where all the crime takes place.  If you have some, please post away.  I want to see some Oz grit and urban decay for once!  

[The Olderfleet]

This is Australia - we don't have ghettos!

[samsonyuen]

How about aboriginal communities that are on the more squalid side?  I agree though, Australia compared to Canada and especially the United States, is a land of a huge middle class, meaning few downtroddenly poor people and few extremely rich people.

Edited by samsonyuen, 19 June 2005 - 02:51 AM.

[bsutter2]

I guess that is why australia has a worse crime rate then the united states? :/

[Dale]

I saw some pretty squalid precincts in Sydney. And some pretty depressing neighborhoods in Melbourne.

[robm]

the thing is you dont need to look for these slums in australia - they are in your own back yard if your in the good old US of A - see our slums are designed on those from the US in the 60's and 70's (i cant remember what it was called but it was based on a social experiment that has gone horribly wrong in this country) - they are a little hard to find over here if you dont live in the city as they are mainly on what was the outskirts of citys back then - no reason to go there if you dont live there.

If you want to see some REAL aussie slums i would suggest Redfern in Sydney and Footscray in Melbourne.  We made these ones ourselves and are in inner city areas.  I wil post some pics of typical government housing when i have a new dig camera!!

as for the greater crime rate in aust i was a little surprised - would love to see the figures!

Dale, on Jun 27 2005, 10:14 AM, said:

I saw some pretty squalid precincts in Sydney. And some pretty depressing neighborhoods in Melbourne.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Dale]

robm, on Jul 22 2005, 12:09 AM, said:

the thing is you dont need to look for these slums in australia - they are in your own back yard if your in the good old US of A - see our slums are designed on those from the US in the 60's and 70's (i cant remember what it was called but it was based on a social experiment that has gone horribly wrong in this country) - they are a little hard to find over here if you dont live in the city as they are mainly on what was the outskirts of citys back then - no reason to go there if you dont live there.

If you want to see some REAL aussie slums i would suggest Redfern in Sydney and Footscray in Melbourne.  We made these ones ourselves and are in inner city areas.  I wil post some pics of typical government housing when i have a new dig camera!!

as for the greater crime rate in aust i was a little surprised - would love to see the figures!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I certainly don't recall denying the presence of slums in America. And it was probably Redfern that I stumbled into. Plus, there was a dreary precinct on the way from Melbourne CBD to the zoo. Perhaps that was Footscray ?

[Citystyle]

We have old suburbs that were cheap when they were new and are quite uggly but it's not like you will be born and die in the ghetto. We have no real ghetto's travel to the middle of the desert and you will find people living in tin shack's but thats of the beaten track.

[Australian1]

We don't have any ghetto's
In Australia, not even 1!

[xyralothep]

Indeed Australia does have a worse crime rate than the US - see http://ruljis.leiden.../data/i_VIC.HTM for example.

In fact in absolute terms (ie not relative to average income) poverty is slightly worse in Australia than in the US - the homeless rate is higher too.  

In Australia (compared to US) poverty is spread throughout the suburbs, SW Sydney and northern Adelaide being among the worst.

(btw I think the poor suburb between Melbourne city and the Zoo is Macaulay - Footscray is slightly further from the city)

[Dobutsu]

You could also attribute the relatively level classes and lack of slums in oz to the relatively integrated society....asians, greeks, mideasterns, etc generally don't have a huge geographical concentration in the major cities and certainly not in the country towns...at least not that I saw. Lots of race riots in the news recently though.

[damus]

bsutter2, on Jun 21 2005, 11:32 PM, said:

I guess that is why australia has a worse crime rate then the united states? :/

I heard crime such as home invasions skyrocketed after they enacted stiff gun laws.

[xyralothep]

Australia doesn't have level classes.... inequality here is almost as high as in the US - 2.0% of income accruing to the poorest 10% in Australia vs 1.8% in the US (according to CIA world factbook).  
(This is much more unequal than most European countries).

And with the lower average income here, this means that the poor in absolute terms are significantly worse off here.

As for pictures.... houses and flats like this are fairly typical of many of Australia's outer suburbs (these pictures are from southwest Sydney) (sorry - these are real estate images so they will disappear once someone buys the houses)

Edited by xyralothep, 25 April 2006 - 12:00 AM.

[urbanrenewal]

Its true that Australia does have social gaps - the standards of housing in the "not so nice areas" compared with the rest of large cities, (I'm thinking of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth here) are really much lower. Near where I live there's lots of 1970's and 1980's houses, all rather unimaginaitive, in a low-income area. I drove through the area one Sunday afternoon in summer. Nobody was outside, it felt like a  ghost town.

[Jerseyman4]

Ive only heard good things about Australia! I have family from central New Jersey that moved there because they liked it there way better than America.

[paul514]

The only place I've seen in Australia that can actually classify as somewhat ghetto is Redfern in Sydney, though even there it did not appear to be anywhere as bad as places in U.S. or Latin American cities. It's a working class aborigional neighbourhood that was tainted by riots years back. What actually impressed me in Australia was the fact that most people were middle class, I didn't see the huge socio-economic gap that I've seen in many other countries. Even the wealthy didn't seem to show it off as much (except in Gold Coast).

[urbanrenewal]

paul514, on Jun 14 2006, 12:43 PM, said:

The only place I've seen in Australia that can actually classify as somewhat ghetto is Redfern in Sydney, though even there it did not appear to be anywhere as bad as places in U.S. or Latin American cities. It's a working class aborigional neighbourhood that was tainted by riots years back. What actually impressed me in Australia was the fact that most people were middle class, I didn't see the huge socio-economic gap that I've seen in many other countries. Even the wealthy didn't seem to show it off as much (except in Gold Coast).

Thankfully Redfern isin't really a ghetto - there's only one block that's a no-go area. That's mostly because it is a violent spot. Otherwise the suburb is being renovated on a colossal scale, with the frightful multi-storey public housing at last set to go. It's upsetting lots of people, mostly in the Aborginal community, because a lot of the residents ther are socially dislocated and Redfern is their only home. Sydney being Sydney it's also extremely difficult to afford housing here.

Have a look at the Redfern-Waterloo Authority http://www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au/

Thankfully the state government has removed control over the area (for large projects) from the City of Sydney and is administering the re-development sdirectly.

[Chtimi]

I have seen a TV report about the so-called principality of Hutt River. It looks more like a ghetto than Monaco !

[xyralothep]

Visitors from US tend percieve us to have no poor areas because our poor areas are on the outskirts of our cities where visitors never.  Indeed there is literally only one block of inner city ghetto in Australia, ie "the block" in Redfern, protected from development by the government.

I also think some people (including most Australians) confuse class with race, so that the racial homegeneity of Australia makes it appear middle class (in fact the average Australian income is lower than the average black income in America).

[beltwayboy08]

The Olderfleet, on Jun 17 2005, 09:02 PM, said:

This is Australia - we don't have ghettos!

I like London. It may have slums, but the city is unbeatable. That goes for most of the UK.