They are home to subtropical beaches that city slickers dream of, but for some the coastal city lifestyle might not be as fun as it looks.
A trend is emerging showing that “internal migrants” are moving away from the Gold and Sunshine coasts, according to the latest Regional Movers Index.
While the movements might be relatively small so far, Regional Australia Institute’s CEO Liz Ritchie said it was a trend and a “livability factor” was having an impact.
The quarterly report found the Gold Coast and Noosa on the Sunshine Coast lost residents to other regional areas more than any other regional city, with outflows of -3.7 per cent and -2.5 per cent respectively.
Both cities are still the most attractive locations for those moving out of Australian capital cities overall, but Ms Ritchie said capital city migrants could arrive to find painful traffic, busy hospitals, and increasingly out of reach housing.
“The dream is not always what they presume the dream might be,” Ms Ritchie said.
“They’re then looking to move beyond those locations into further afield regional locations.”
Greater Geelong, Moorabool west of Melbourne, and Queensland’s Fraser Coast rounded out the top five most popular regional areas for internal migration.
Sydney loses residents to the regions
For the purposes of the Regional Australia Institute’s research, the Gold and Sunshine coasts are still considered regional.
But the two tourist havens, a short drive from Brisbane, are among the biggest cities in the country.
The analysis also found Sydney continued to shed the most residents, responsible for 67 per cent of capital city outflows to regional areas across Australia in the year to March.
But the issues that city dwellers often tried to escape from were increasingly prevalent in larger regional cities.
“I know, for those who live on the Gold Coast, congestion and population growth has created some growing pains,” Ms Ritchie said.
“People’s migration and mobility patterns will always be driven by how their life looks and feels.”
Millennials, born between 1981 and 1995, were the most likely demographic to move to regional locations.
“If they’re taking that opportunity to move to those locations and find the quality of life — due to congestion and housing supply constraints — isn’t what they expected, I think they’re going to make that next move [regionally],” Ms Ritchie said.
“That’s an important consideration.”
The Regional Australia Institute was unable to provide actual figures on how many people had moved because the report was based on Commonwealth Bank customer data.
The organisation said the figures were statistically significant because they were based on relocations amongst its 16 million customers.
‘We can’t close the gates’
As growing pains are felt in regional cities, politicians have acknowledged there is an issue.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles said growing pains on the Gold Coast were “unprecedented”.
“That surge in population, that’s not just affecting our hospital service, it’s affecting the traffic as well as our housing system. So we need to address all of those things,” he said on the Gold Coast this week.
At a local level, Gold Coast planning chair Mark Hammel said existing residents needed to understand that their neighbourhoods would change, and that was key to managing growth.
“I think the main challenges are … community acceptance of it,” he said.
He said Gold Coast population growth appeared to be ahead of projections and he expected the city would reach a population of more than a million by the early 2040s.
“If you want your kids and grandkids to be able to live on the Gold Coast in the future, we need to have a really strong conversation about where they’re going to live, what those dwellings look like, and how we fit those people in,” Cr Hammel said.
This echoed a NSW Productivity Commission report which found that Sydney was at risk of being “the city without grandchildren”.
Cr Hammel said alongside additional infrastructure like libraries, parks and roads, changes throughout the city could include more units, secondary dwellings and subdivisions.
“You know, we can’t put the full sign up, we can’t close the gates off of the Gold Coast,” he said.
Posted , updated