City of Sydney’s population passes 200,000
The City of Sydney last week said that booming housing developments have seen the City’s population hit 200,000, with growth exceeding previous forecasts and 100 new homes being completed in the City each week.
According to the City of Sydney, at the time of the last census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated the City’s population at 183,000 with only two Sydney councils, Blacktown and Sutherland, with populations above 200,000.
In April the ABS estimated the City’s population at 198,000. Two decades ago in 1995, the City’s population was 101,500, which means Sydney’s population has virtually doubled in that time.
The City of Sydney is now at the epicentre of Sydney’s housing boom with state government figures showing almost one in five of all new homes in greater Sydney are built in the City’s 26 square kilometre area.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the figures are a huge vote of confidence in the City’s efforts to make Sydney an economic powerhouse that is also a great place to live.
The City of Sydney’s Strategic Research Manager, Phil Raskall, said the surge in new home completions has seen Sydney’s population hit 200,000.
“We cannot pinpoint the precise moment we reached the 200,000 milestone as buyers of new homes can often wait several months before they move in,” Mr Raskall said.
“I have no doubt we now have 200,000 residents and, with the large number of new units being completed in the City, our population is on track to hit 250,000 by 2022. That’s three years ahead of earlier forecasts which predicted the City would hit a quarter of a million people in 2025.”
The annual average rate of building over the past five years has seen just over 1,900 dwellings built each year. The forecast average for the next five years based on known development applications and completions is nearly 5,000 per year.
In 2017-18, 8,000 dwellings are due for completion in the City of Sydney. Next financial year that total is just under 6,000 including almost 2,500 in Green Square alone.
Sydney’s growing population is confirmed with State Government figures for the first seven months of the financial year showing more than three times more homes were built in the City of Sydney than were built in any of the 41 other Sydney council areas.
The figures in the NSW Government’s Metropolitan Development Program show that for the first seven months of 2014-15, the City added more than four times the number of new dwellings as all eastern suburbs councils combined.
While the City of Sydney is home to less than five per cent of metropolitan Sydney’s 4.6 million population, and covers just a fifth of one per cent of its land area, it’s where 19.1 per cent of all new homes were built since the end of June.
Source: News Release, Urbanalyst, 15 June, 2015