The Suburb Disruption Cycle and Dorsett’s Law of Suburban Succession: A Theoretical Model of Residential Turnover and Suburban Reinvention

This paper proposes the Suburb Disruption Cycle as a theoretical model for explaining suburban transformation as a patterned process of disruption, reorganisation and residential succession. Existing accounts of suburban change often emphasise particular dimensions of transformation, including decline, gentrification, densification, migration, financialisation, post-suburbanisation and symbolic revaluation. This paper synthesises these dimensions into an eight-stage causal sequence: Current Residents, Disruption, Housing Form, Affordability, Reputation, Business Ecology, Resident Turnover and New Residents. From this sequence, the paper derives Dorsett’s Law of Suburban Succession: sustained disruption within or upon a suburb produces residential succession when it reorganises housing form, affordability, reputation and business ecology. The law is advanced as a conditional sociological proposition rather than a deterministic claim. Its purpose is to explain how new resident orders are produced through cumulative material, economic, symbolic and commercial change. The paper develops the model conceptually and applies it to St Kilda, Victoria, during its Riviera of Victoria life cycle from 1860 to 1910. The case demonstrates how transport access, gold-rush wealth, land speculation and financial crisis contributed to housing transformation, rising exclusivity, reputational elevation, leisure-oriented business development and the emergence of a new elite seaside resident order. The paper contributes a middle-range theory of suburban reinvention that can guide future historical, comparative and empirical research into suburban succession.