Post-COVID-19 Australian urban settlement: rebuild or reposition the nation?

There is little doubt that Australia, in global terms, fared well throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia’s combination of a sparsely settled continent confined to its coastlines allowed for a COVID-19 containment program, making each nation’s vast states a containment zone. Each state became an isolated population envelope with solid border controls. Citizens were not allowed to travel freely between states, leave the country with few exceptions, or even travel to nearby New Zealand for compassionate reasons. This lockdown included locking out Australian citizens visiting or traveling in foreign nations. One of the many consequences of this extreme isolation was making many metropolitan-based Australians re-consider living in the country’s massive urban coastal settlements. For the first time in the nation’s history, many urbanites are relocating to smaller cities and towns away from harbor cities to inland areas with lower densities and with improved digital infrastructure. Moreover, small places provide greater social distancing with consequential lower COVID-19 contagion spread.