Strike that up as another win for Melbourne, folks. In news direct from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, our beloved Melbs has finally overtaken Sydney as the nation’s most populous city.
It's the first time this has happened since the Gold Rush, with the official stats deeming that Melbourne has 18,700 more people than the Harbour City. And it's all thanks to a technicality, with the borders of the city recently being redrawn.
When it comes to which areas actually classify as being within the cities of Sydney and Melbourne, the ABS uses a nifty thing called the ‘Significant Urban Area Classification’, which refers to populated urban areas that lie next to each other that each have residential populations of more than 10,000 people. Just recently, when the northwestern district of Melton was amalgamated into Melbourne’s ‘Significant Urban Area’, Melbourne became the biggest city Down Under, with the new boundary line increasing the city's population by the thousands.
Right now, when you count the Sydney Basin and the Blue Mountains into (Greater) Sydney's population also, Greater Sydney is still bigger than Greater Melbourne, but as we reported earlier in the year, this won't last for long. By 2031-32, our fair city will be home to approximately 6.1 million people, and overall, Victoria’s entire population will swell from 6.6 million now to 7.8 million. Greater Sydney, meanwhile, is predicted to grow to 6 million people by that period.
Although the border change is what's caused this recent population spike for Melbourne, population experts are also citing internal migration as the reason why Sydney’s growth has been slowing – many people have been departing Sydney for other parts of Australia. In contrast, after Melbourne’s population growth dipped into the negative during the pandemic, it has bounced back thanks to a massive influx of people moving in from across the country and overseas, and this trend is projected to continue.
Melbourne: the place to be, obviously.