Population densities of Australian Capital Cities – Melbourne and Sydney

Australian Capital Territory (ACT) (‘Greater Canberra’) 2011 population density (per km2) by SA1 geography

• The nation’s capital of Canberra is another planned city (like the City of Adelaide) which was selected as a site for a new capital in 1908 – a compromise between the “giants” of Melbourne and Sydney (Lewis 2006). It was officially named in 1913 and from then grew to fulfil Walter Burley Griffin’s planned city ‘wheel and spoke’ design with the outer area districts of the city being built out after in the early 1900s, throughout the last century and even recently with the commencement of the District of Molongo Valley in 2010. These latter district developments did not follow the original Canberra Central geometric design.
• In 2014, the preliminary population of the ACT was 386,000, an increase of 28,779 from the 2011 Census.
• On the population density map, a few areas in the Canberra Central district stand out. On the south side of Lake Burley Griffin, a pocket of SA1s in Kingston, a wedge between Wentworth Avenue and Canberra Avenue has a higher proportion of high density dwellings (namely apartments) which makes the area stand out in terms of population density (3,511 persons at a population density of 5,615 persons per km2. Quite different to the surrounding areas of stand alone houses and some semi-attached houses which have population densities of 800-1,200 persons per km2.
  North of the lake, along the north/south Northbourne Avenue corridor – several SA1s with apartment and older brick flat buildings also have population densities higher than the surroundings.
• The District of Gungahlin, seen in the north-most segment of the population density map, displays some of the highest densities even though most of the SA1s up here are composed of stand alone houses at a density of around 10-13 dwellings per hectare.
• Southwest and across the A25 of Gunghalin, the District of Belconnen, built in the 1960s also stands out on the map although with lower population and dwelling densities. When examined on an aerial photo map, these densities are lower due to the nature of suburb design – more green spaces and non-populated land, thus decreasing the population densities.
• The new suburb of Casey does not stand out on the density map yet as the 2011 population of the suburb is approximately 1,462 – around 558 persons per km2. By 2013 however, the development of greenfield estates increases the population to approximately 2,881 based in 2013 preliminary SA1 results (note – 2014 preliminary ERP figures indicate a population of 3,813 for the area, this would be a density of 1,454 persons per km2 – a near threefold increase on 2011.
• The (even newer) suburb of Moncrieff in the District of Gungahlin currently has no completed/occupied dwellings (based on March 2015 aerial imagery) but is expected to accommodate up to 1,800 residential dwellings. Based on the current earthworks footprint, this could be a density of 2,450-2,540 persons per km2 – similar to that of Cologne in France or Rotterdam in the Netherlands (link).
• The population densities in the 1960s-1970s suburbs of Weston Creek and Tuggeranong (south of the centre) display similar population density and layout characteristics as other suburbs in the ACT which were built around that era with a dwelling density of around 8-10 dwellings per hectare – most are stand alone houses with some areas being higher in density due to the presence of multi storey flat buildings. Overall, these older suburbs tend to have slightly larger residential land parcels and a higher mix of residential areas with green space pockets, thus exhibiting lower population densities whereas the recent and newly emerging suburbs have a more mutually exclusive zoning design style of areas/SA1s with a higher residential land development saturation along areas specifically designed as distinct green space allocation – coupled with smaller parcels, the densities of dwellings in these new areas are around 10-12 dwellings per hectare.

The next blog entry in this series will explore the next three State capital cities – Greater Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.