Newcastle City Is A Magnet For The Young

Newcastle Herald

Tuesday August 12, 2008

John Miner

But they won't have a voice on the council, writes John Miner.

THE census of two years ago shows that 33,760 people aged 15 to 30 live in Newcastle. This hits on an essential point about Newcastle that seems not well understood even within the city itself.

Newcastle is not like other cities and towns, especially those outside the capital cities.

It's what demographers call a magnet city.

Country towns typically lose population in the transition-to-work age group. Young people leave country towns when they finish school, to find work or to pursue further education or training.

This shows in the census as a fall in population between the 15 to 19 age band and the cohort aged 20 to 24.

(The census is commonly analysed in 20 age bands covering five years each, and a small 21st band of people aged 100 or more.)

Newcastle is a city people move to, not from.

It had 9320 15- to 19-year-olds at the 2006 census, and 12,436 residents aged 20 to 24. That's an increase of one-third when most cities suffer a decline.

Inner Newcastle, on the new definition that the Bureau of Statistics used in 2006, had more than 10 per cent of its entire population aged 20 to 24.

There is a pocket of Newcastle where the 15 to 24 age group reaches almost 70 per cent of the total population: around the university's main campus at Callaghan.

Obviously, a major university attracts young people to a city.

The effect is even more marked in cities like Armidale and Bathurst, which don't have a permanent population as big as Newcastle's but enjoy an influx of resident students every year.

A university does not explain, though, why so many younger people live in inner Newcastle.

That's the most densely populated part of the local government area and that itself is probably a major reason for young people to go there.

While the Bureau of Statistics cites educational and employment opportunities in magnet cities employment opportunities may be more plentiful in Sydney but Newcastle still looks good to kid from, say, Quandialla or Nabiac it seems to think itself unqualified to mention their third major attraction.

I call it social opportunity.

Human beings are programmed to seek a partner. Even if they don't recognise it, humans aged 15 to 24 and, with luck, a few decades beyond are likely to be governed as much by their hormones as by reason and logic.

What makes Newcastle so attractive to young people is that it already has a high proportion of young residents.

They may say they may believe that they have come for the university, but they will be mixing with people who have come for work.

They may think they are here for a job, but they will meet people who have come for the lifestyle.

I don't believe most young people frequenting inner Newcastle hotels have a burning thirst.

I think they are obeying their hormones, seeking like-minded people. It doesn't hurt if those like minds are cute too.

Back home, they might have a service station that will do a hamburger for the kids who hang there; in Newcastle, they have not only KFC and Hungry Jack's but cafe culture at Gloria Jeans. It's not the menu that counts when you're 19, it's the getting together.

Broadly speaking, 40 per cent of Newcastle's population is under 30, and 40 per cent over 40.

To assume that Newcastle belongs to the older generations is, statistically, an error. It is equally a city of young people.

In a recent letter to The Herald Zane Alcorn made the point that young people will not be represented on Newcastle City Council in proportion to their numbers in the population.

At the 2004 local government elections, according to the Department of Local Government, most councillors elected were aged 50 to 59. In 1995, 40 to 49 was the most common group.

A woman under 40 was twice as likely to miss election in 2004 if she stood for a council outside Sydney than in Sydney; a man under 40 was three times more likely to win in Sydney than elsewhere.

I can't change those figures: I'm well over 40 and male.

Your mission, Zane, should you accept it, is to put together your own team to deliver the civic revolution. If you haven't run for council before, the department's analysis is that you probably won't get elected this time.

You have until tomorrow to nominate.

John Miner is a freelance journalist and former political adviser.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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