Gender and Life Course in the Narratives of Melbourne's High-rise Housing Developers

Socially constructed ideas about the life course, sometimes encompassing gender relations, have long informed the views of those within the housing development industry about who should be housed where in the city, living what sorts of lives. Drawing on the findings of a recent study of developers' narratives about the construction of expensive, high-rise housing in central Melbourne, a relatively new form of dwelling even in this part of the metropolitan area, several themes are found to characterise the taken-for-granted ways in which these city-builders view the gendered life courses of housing consumers. Developers' narratives oppose the suburban 'home' to the high-rise 'lifestyle', consider central city high-rise residences as appropriate only for people without families, and see women, separately from the couples they make up with men, only as potential victims requiring the security that high-rise apartment living is said to provide. These narratives reiterate the characteristics of an essentialised 'empty nester', or 'young professional' housing consumer, who is envisaged to occupy the new housing and is defined according to life course stage and gender. The developers' partial and narrow accounts of the likely consumers of this high-rise housing is one factor amongst many that explains the building of precincts of high-rise housing that have limited facilities for children and for pursuits other than consumption of the individual 'lifestyle'.