Abstract
The movement of people to reside in new locations – a key aspect of demographic change – is a phenomenon Australia shares with the rest of the world. While most of Australia’s population lives in an urban environment, the dimensions of demographic change are more complex than a steady leakage of rural people to the cities. There is a simultaneous migration of rural people to other rural and regional areas, and urban people to new coastal, rural and regional areas to fulfil the apparent opportunities of a better life. In many respects, the appeal and limitation of rural areas is temporally, socially and spatially specific. This chapter provides an overview of the principal patterns, drivers and implications of demographic change for rural communities and landscapes. While drawing on international experiences, this chapter is framed by the Australian context and outlines the more substantive discussion that follows in subsequent chapters.
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Abbreviations
- ABARE:
-
Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics
- ABS:
-
Australian Bureau of Statistics
- CSIRO:
-
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
- LGA:
-
Local Government Area
- NRM:
-
Natural Resource Management
- NIPF:
-
Non-industrial Private Forests
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Acknowledgments
We thank Simon McDonald (Spatial Data Analysis Network), Charles Sturt University, for his assistance in data collation, and are grateful to Professor Jim Walmsley, University of New England, for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter. GWL’s contribution to this chapter was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0770261).
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Race, D., Luck, G.W., Black, R. (2010). Patterns, Drivers and Implications of Demographic Change in Rural Landscapes. In: Luck, G., Black, R., Race, D. (eds) Demographic Change in Australia's Rural Landscapes. Landscape Series, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9654-8_1
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