How urbanised is Australia’s population?

Glenn - The Census Expert

Glenn is our resident Census expert. After ten years working at the ABS, Glenn's deep knowledge of the Census has been a crucial input in the development of our community profiles. These tools help everyday people uncover the rich and important stories about our communities that are often hidden deep in the Census data. Glenn is also our most prolific blogger - if you're reading this, you've just finished reading one of his blogs. Take a quick look at the front page of our blog and you'll no doubt find more of Glenn's latest work. As a client manager, Glenn travels the country giving sought-after briefings to councils and communities (these are also great opportunities for Glenn to tend to his rankings in Geolocation games such as Munzee and Geocaching).

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8 Responses

  1. Ian Woodcock says:

    Hi Glenn – do you have figures that show how urbanised Australia has been since European settlement, or at least, since the first formal census was done? I imagine that many of the definitions and categorisations may have changed during this time, but it would be fascinating to get a sense of the the trajectory of urbanisation in Australia, given that it is now so highly urbanised. Thanks!

  2. Rob P says:

    ‘A population of more than 1000’ is a very peculiar definition of ‘urban’ and renders this data more or less meaningless, in my opinion.

    From a rural health perspective, a population size of 5000 -10,000 is enough to sustain a rural district hospital. I would be interested in the state by state breakdown of towns of this size.

  3. Hugh Dickey (Auckland NZ) says:

    I have done a detailed urban/rural population divide using various criteria from 1874 onwards, and would love to have historical data from Australia to compare this with. Are you either able to help me out or point me in the right direction?
    Many thanks
    Hugh

  4. Bud says:

    coolios buddy.

  5. Ian Bowie says:

    I refer Hugh to my ‘The Urban and Non Urban Populations of Australia 1800-1981,’ A Mitchell Occasional Paper in Geography (ISSN 0812-2423), Mitchell C A E, Bathurst, NSW, 1987.

  6. nigga AYE says:

    The world has never seen such an intense period of urbanization: is it sustainable on a global level?

  7. John Collins says:

    “The ABS loosely defines an urban area as a centre with a population of at least 1,000, and a population density at least 200 people per square kilometre contiguous with this centre.”

    Hmmm – that would classify the inhabitants of some pretty small towns as being “urbanized”. My wife spent may years in Coonamble. I am sure the inhabitants of that town population 2700 would hardly consider themselves “urbanized”.

    Perhaps the ABS can come up with a more useful definition, perhaps one that includes the culture, the extent of public transportation, traffic congestion, and type of employment. Something which might be more useful for predicting the spread of pandemics.

  1. May 1, 2017

    […] figures indicate that all the mainland states have an urbanisation rate of c.90%. You can see detailed numbers here. One of the issues this creates is that even though we have a growing population – we are […]

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