The Amenity Complex: Towards a Framework for Analysing and Predicting the Emergence of a Multifunctional Countryside in Australia

There is growing consensus among academics, regional development organisations and rural communities that the future growth and development of rural regions is increasingly dependent upon their ability to convey, to both established and prospective residents, the 'amenity' of their local physical, social and economic environments. However, little research to date has sought to identify exactly what comprises 'amenity' in the rural context, or has examined how this conceptually slippery quality is distributed across rural Australia, or how it influences local demographic, socio-economic and land use change. This paper attempts a broad scale investigation of rural amenity in the south-east Australian ecumene, identifying its core components in this context, mapping its distribution and assessing the nature of its influence over in-migration rates over the past three decades. The paper finds that, at a macro-scale, amenity tends to follow a general gradient from high to low according to distance from the coast, and that its relationship with in-migration rates has increased substantially between 1976–1981 and 1996–2001.