“The Corporate Geography of Australian Cities: Tracking change in ASX-Listed Firm Headquarters, 2013-2016” By Thomas Sigler

Dr. Sigler with Adelaide Lord Mayor Martin Haese, who addressed the SOAC delegation on the conference’s opening night. Courtesy of Thomas Sigler.

Dr. Thomas Sigler, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Queensland’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is working on an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project investigating the corporate Geographies of Australian cities. The geography of firm (business company) location is a longstanding focus in urban studies. Dr Sigler’s work was presented at the State of Australian Cities (SOAC) conference in Adelaide in November, 2017. Written in collaboration with Mr Ben Parker (Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines) and Dr Kirsten Martinus (UWA), the research has found that all major Australian cities except Melbourne lost firm headquarters (HQs) during the 2013-2016 period. A major contributing factor was the downturn in the resources sector. Cities in which mining and energy play a key role, most obviously Perth, had the greatest HQ losses, while Melbourne was the only city to gain between 2013 and 2016. The research showed that within our cities major losses in firm activity were experienced in core areas (CBDs). This was compensated to some degree by suburbs, especially inner-ring suburbs, gaining firm HQs, for example in information technology. These broad changes indicate a shift to the knowledge economy across cities in which central and CBD-fringe locations are desirable from a firm perspective.

Dr. Sigler’s research was picked up by the Australian Financial Review, Dec 7 2017.