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One of the most publicly discussed economic phenomena since early 2005 has been the dramatic rise in the global price of oil. The rising global oil price has been translated into rising domestic fuel costs. Given the heavy dependence of Australian cities on cheap fuel for urban transport the increasing oil price raises questions about their economic impact on urban households. In a previous paper (Dodson and Sipe 2005) we examined the sociospatial distribution of ‘oil vulnerability’in Australian cities. That paper received much attention from scholars, policy makers and the media. The earlier paper established a basic method for assessing oil vulnerability via a spatial index that measured a combination of car dependence and socio-economic status at the level of the Census Collection District. We termed our original index the ‘vulnerability index for petroleum expense rises’(VIPER). A version of this paper is to be published in an international journal. Many questions still remain, however, about the impact of rising oil prices on cities.

Our continuing scholarly interest in this issue and increasing public and political concern about rising fuel costs has motivated us to extend our original VIPER assessment to take into account further aspects of urban socio-economic vulnerability to rising oil prices. One of the key emerging public concerns is the socio-economic risk to households arising from the combined impact of rising mortgage expenses, historically high petrol prices and inflationary pressures. To assess how the impact of these three factors is likely to be distributed across Australian cities we have created a new index, the ‘vulnerability assessment …