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In 2021, Sydney surpassed Melbourne to become Australia's most populous urban area, with 4,959,107 residents. This shift was influenced by Melbourne's significant population decline of 65,115 people (−1.3%) due to pandemic-related factors.
Cities like the Gold Coast–Tweed Heads (+1.3%), Newcastle–Maitland (+1.5%), Sunshine Coast (+1.6%), and Geelong (+1.9%) experienced notable population increases, reflecting a trend of Australians relocating from major capitals to regional centers during the pandemic.
While Brisbane and Perth saw modest growth, other capitals like Canberra–Queanbeyan experienced a population decrease of 1,841 people (−0.4%), highlighting the varied impact of COVID-19 across urban areas.
The pandemic accelerated 'fleechange' movements, with individuals seeking lifestyle changes by moving to regional areas within two hours of major cities, contributing to the growth of these urban centers.
These demographic shifts underscore the need for adaptive urban planning and infrastructure development to accommodate changing population dynamics in both metropolitan and regional areas.

Glenn Capuano

Customer Success Manager

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This is the annual update to the popular Top 50 cities in Australia blog. Updated population data is released every year by the ABS; see what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and how COVID-19 has affected the rankings.

Our most popular series over the past 12 years of writing the .id blog has undoubtedly been our “Top 50 cities”. Everyone loves a ranking! Each year the ABS release population numbers for urban areas of Australia with more than about 10,000 people, and we look at the 50 largest centres to see how population change is altering the rankings. There’s not usually much change year-to-year, but COVID-19, border closures, lockdowns and associated population movement have shifted things around a bit for 2021.

As we’ve previously looked at, Australia’s population growth stalled in 2020-21, due primarily to border closures, and there are now vast differences between growth rates within Australia. Generally our largest cities and established urban areas have declined (particularly Sydney and Melbourne) while places where people look for lifestyle change (now popularly known as “fleechange” areas) within 2 hours drive of the capitals have tended to boom. So here is the list as of 2021.

The usual note: this is a list of “significant urban areas”; it is not the same as the Greater Capital City areas and represents primarily built up contiguously urban parts of our major centres.

Rank	Significant urban area	2021 Pop	5 year change	5 year change %	1 year change	1 year change %	Change in rank (1 yr)
1	Sydney NSW	4,959,107	321,671	6.9%	-7,103	-0.1%	+1
2	Melbourne Vic	4,901,863	355,270	7.8%	-65,115	-1.3%	-1
3	Brisbane Qld	4,901,863	213,066	9.3%	20,724	0.8%	0
4	Perth WA	2,099,530	117,260	5.9%	15,339	0.7%	0
5	Adelaide SA	1,359,087	53,561	4.1%	1,664	0.1%	0
6	Gold Coast – Tweed Heads Qld-NSW	718,772	73,061	11.3%	9,402	1.3%	0
7	Newcastle – Maitland NSW	505,489	29,773	6.3%	7,471	1.5%	0
8	Canberra – Queanbeyan ACT-NSW	462,984	23,013	5.2%	-1,841	-0.4%	0
9	Sunshine Coast Qld	353,906	37,001	11.7%	5,601	1.6%	0
10	Central Coast NSW	338,567	10,237	3.1%	1,275	0.4%	0
11	Wollongong NSW	312,167	17,383	5.9%	2,823	0.9%	0
12	Geelong Vic	287,704	33,408	13.1%	5,385	1.9%
13	Hobart Tas	218,386	10,990	5.3%	-568	-0.3%	0
14	Townsville Qld	184,271	6,027	3.4%	978	0.5%	0
15	Cairns Qld	155,529	6,347	4.3%	224	0.1%	0
16	Toowoomba Qld	140,303	6,649	5.0%	797	0.6%	0
17	Darwin NT	132,921	-177	-0.1%	-424	-0.3%	0
18	Ballarat Vic	111,348	9,670	9.5%	1,851	1.7%	0
19	Bendigo Vic	103,575	7,641	8.0%	1,112	1.1%	0
20	Albury – Wodonga NSW-Vic	97,274	6,438	7.1%	1,215	1.3%	0
21	Launceston Tas	88,884	3,152	3.7%	-249	-0.3%	0
22	Mackay Qld	81,262	851	1.1%	351	0.4%	0
23	Rockhampton Qld	79,967	1,369	1.7%	1.7%	0.5%	0
24	Melton Vic	77,392	15,432	24.9%	1,923	2.5%	0
25	Bunbury WA	75,440	1,762	2.4%	271	0.4%	0
26	Coffs Harbour NSW	73,443	3,337	4.8%	424	0.6%	0
27	Bundaberg Qld	71,796	1,617	2.3%	248	0.3%	0
28	Wagga Wagga NSW	57,004	1,204	2.2%	121	0.2%	0
29	Hervey Bay Qld	56,599	3,583	6.8%	623	1.1%	0
30	Shepparton – Mooroopna Vic	52,273	1,565	3.1%	-233	-0.4%	0
31	Mildura – Wentworth Vic-NSW	51,794	743	1.5%	507	-1.0%	0
32	Port Macquarie NSW	50,365	3,989	8.6%	882	1.8%	0
33	Gladstone – Tannum Sands Qld	45,987	1,033	2.3%	58	0.1%	0
34	Tamworth NSW	43,330	1,344	3.2%	81	0.2%	0
35	Traralgon – Morwell Vic	42,567	1,182	2.9%	139	0.3%	0
36	Warragul – Drouin Vic	42,115	6,592	18.6%	1,484	3.7%	+2
37	Bowral – Mittagong NSW	41,454	2,801	7.2%	488	1.2%	-1
38	Orange NSW	41,162	1,576	4.0%	274	0.7%	-1
39	Busselton WA	41,034	3,344	8.9%	700	1.7%	0
40	Dubbo NSW	39,363	2,245	6.0%	311	0.8%	0
41	Nowra – Bomaderry NSW	38,947	2,157	5.9%	631	1.6%	0
42	Bathurst NSW	38,087	2,209	6.2%	543	1.4%	0
43	Geraldton WA	37,228	-1,141	-3.0%	-35	-0.1%	0
44	Warrnambool Vic	35,957	1,342	3.9%	79	0.2%	0
45	Albany WA	34,612	828	2.5%	18	0.1%	0
46	Devonport Tas	30,883	983	3.3%	18	0.1%	0
47	Devonport Tas	29,940	408	1.4%	-3	0.0%	0
48	Nelson Bay NSW	28,752	1,293	4.7%	259	0.9%	+2
49	Kalgoorlie – Boulder WA	28,565	-2,087	-6.8%	-354	-1.2%	-1
50	Lismore NSW	28,469	-547	-1.9%	-27	-0.1%	-1

Sydney returns to the top spot

Last year we heralded with much fanfare that Melbourne was the largest city in Australia, overtaking Sydney (using the SUA definition only). This lasted a year; with Melbourne’s population decline due to lockdowns, a loss of more than 65,000 people relegates Melbourne to the #2 spot, with Sydney once more Australia’s largest city (despite its own population fall).

Other notable changes

Rising areas represent those fleechange locations 100km or so from our capitals. Warragul-Drouin in Victoria rises two places to #36, Nelson Bay NSW is up to #48 and (just off the list) Victor Harbor – Goolwa in SA rises 2 places to #51.
Plenty of areas have grown or shrunk in population but maintained their position on the list. 42 of the top 50 were at the same position in 2021 as in 2020.
These top 50 urban areas in Australia contain 21,423,279 people in 2021 – 83.2% of the total for Australia. The top 100 urban areas make up 86.9%. Of course, the top 5 alone – the only cities with over 1 million – make up 61%. We are still a very urbanised country.
The effect of the pandemic is seen in the fact that 12 of the top 50 urban centres recorded population declines in 2021. The total for the top 50 was an increase of 9,702 people – just 0.05%, This was mainly due to Melbourne’s large fall.
More than two-thirds of Australia’s population growth occurred in the “Not in a significant urban area” category. This makes up only 13.1% of Australia’s population, but increased by almost 31,000 people for the year, representing a 0.9% increase. This is by far the largest growth in this category since records began in the 1980s. These include all rural areas outside of major centres, as well as smaller towns of less than 10,000 population (and not near the outskirts of a larger urban area).

Urban centres by state

NSW has 19 of the top 50 urban centres, with Qld next on 11.

State/Territory	Urban Centres in the 50 largest 2021
NSW	19
Vic	10
Qld	11
SA	2
WA	6
Tas	3
NT	1
ACT	1

Figures will be adjusted post-Census

Note of course that these are pre-2021 Census figures, and will change once the Census results are out. The ABS reviews population estimates after each Census, so we’ll likely see some differences after the June 2022 release of the 2021 Census, which reveal the true extent of the shifts in population distribution.

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