This report presents a detailed analysis of Wollongong’s labour market as part of research on economic transitions and the spatial aspects of industrial restructuring. It explores how technological change impacts skills, work practices, and occupational gender divisions. Wollongong was selected as a case study city for studying economic transition due to its historical dependence on...

Recent debates about manufacturing in Australia emphasize the primacy of macroeconomic conditions (high dollar, cheap overseas imports), but provide limited discussion of the dynamics and contingencies within cities and regions that shape outcomes . This paper acknowledges that macroeconomic forces have urban/regional effects, but does not simplistically assume that decline is ‘inevitable’.

This paper contributes to recent debates about how urban policy discourses travel, whether they are transferable and what is lost in their translation.