Is Melbourne as dense as Hong Kong?
Recently The Age and various news outlets reported on a study done last year as part of a Churchill Fellowship by a Melbourne City Council staffer. The report was promoted in the television media as “Melbourne’s population density higher than Hong Kong”, and some other cities. Here is a link to The Age article.
This seemed a bit odd to me, as conventional wisdom would have it that Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities on Earth.
So I looked a bit further.
The headline in The Age shows Melbourne population densities at 6,290 residents per hectare, or 8,600 people in a city block, compared to just 2,620 residents per block in Hong Kong.
The key here is that the study is looking at just one block in the city – not an average across the whole city. That block is just north of the CBD, bounded by Elizabeth Street, A’Beckett St, Franklin St, and Stewart St. In fact it’s not even a full city block by that definition, as Stewart St is just a little laneway. This is a very high population density. But drawing a similarity to Hong Kong on the basis of a half-block is drawing a long bow.
You can make population density look as high as you like, just by drawing the boundaries smaller. A high-rise block may have enormous population density, but that’s considered in isolation. Population density is also affected by open space, commercial and industrial land, and the amount of space devoted to transport (roads, railways etc.). People don’t live their whole lives on a city block.
That particular block is just a short walk from two of the largest open spaces in the inner city – Flagstaff Gardens and Carlton Gardens.
When you factor in all the open space and non-residential space in the City of Melbourne, the total population density of the City of Melbourne comes to a grand total of 31 people per hectare. Or around 1/300th of the level quoted in the article. And this is one of the densest parts of the metropolitan area (the City of Port Phillip is actually the densest, at 50 people per hectare (2013)).
Averaged across the entire metropolitan area of Melbourne, average population density is a grand 4.4 people per hectare. Yes, 44 – a 2-digit number. Ok this is a bit disingenuous too, because the Greater Melbourne Statistical Area now includes large areas of state forest, national park and rural districts. But even averaged over the inner suburbs only, it’s just 21 people per hectare. The fact is that Melbourne (and all Australian cities) is among the least dense cities in the world.
Source for all these figures is ABS 3218.0 – Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2013
And yet when you consider smaller areas, it’s all about how you draw the boundary. If it’s tightly around a residential place, this will result in a relatively high density. Even drawing a tight boundary around my (very much low density single storey suburban!) house, I can still manage to arrive at a population density of around 250 people per hectare.
Please note here that I’m not saying there is anything wrong with The Age article. It does clearly state that it’s looking at a block only. But the headline of very high population density is easy to get the wrong end of! Nor does the original report claim to be representing density for the whole city. It’s quite clear that it’s looking at a city block, and the planning controls which apply to it. But it is easy to pick up on a headline like this fuel residents fears about high-rise in their backyards, and “Melbourne is denser than Hong Kong” is a good sound bite.
And it’s just not true. According to Wikipedia, Hong Kong’s average population density is 63 people per hectare averaged over the entire district (remember this is equivalent to the figure of 4.4 for Greater Melbourne, above, and even the inner suburbs total is one third of this value), with 5,700 being the highest density in the most heavily populated districts of the city.
So no, Melbourne is not denser than Hong Kong – not even remotely close. The odd city block around the CBD, here and there, may approach Hong Kong levels.
The original purpose of the study was to generate a discussion on planning controls in the inner city, and provision of services by developers, when they are constructing residential dwellings in the inner city. And this is potentially a debate worth having. But it has little bearing on how this was reported in the television media.
A lot (all?) of the population density figures in this article are incorrect. They are too high by a factor of ten.
For example, you claimed that ‘the City of Port Phillip is actually the densest, at 495 people per hectare (2013)’.
Using the following figures from Wikipedia (which are possibly incorrect, but not by a factor of ten):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Port_Phillip
Population 100,443 (2012)
Area 20.62 km2
There are 100 hectares per square kilometre. (I think this is where you went wrong, and used a value of 10)
This gives an area of 2062 hectares.
The calculation is 100443 / 2062 = 48.7
So the correct density is 48.7 people per hectare, not 495.
The other density values given in this article appear to be also out by a factor of 10.
Thanks Ben, good pickup. I’ve fixed the population densities in there. I’m not sure how that happened. I know there are 100 hectares in a square kilometre!
It makes the quoted density seem all the more incongruous though – which is based purely on drawing a tight boundary around a few buildings.
Ok, let’s read the first sentence of the article together here.
“High-rise apartment towers in central Melbourne are being built at four times the maximum densities allowed in some of the world’s most crowded cities, including Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo, a scathing new report finds.”
In the VERY FIRST SENTENCE of this article, he clearly states that this allegation of the population density in Melbourne being twice of that of Hong Kong is in relation to ‘High-rise apartment towers’, and not to the entire city. However, this is the greater fear, that one day our city will become too dense over time as many of these blocks (both at the time the article was written and now) have been approved and many more keep coming. The point was also that in contrast to other major cities around the world, when developers want to build towers with such high densities, they’re required to develop the area in other ways, by building a park or other community facilities. There is no such policy in place here.
So nit pick all you will about your imagined sleights of manipulating data, but you missed the message, which is that this is the first step in many to becoming an uninhabitable city.
I challenge you to look up on Wikipedia, cities by population density, and then compare those with the highest density, to how they are ranked in terms of how liveable they are.
Further to that, the density issue is also extending to the suburbs, where aggressive investors are building inappropriate, high density apartment buildings and unit complexes, which the communities tend to protest against because they’re deplorable. However, often nothing can be done by protest because there is policy in place to ensure anything within 1km of majority of public transport stops is exempt from community protest. This in turn is not just making the city an uncomfortable and unsustainable place, but it’s driving the property market bonkers.
Density in itself is not bad, it brings workers closer to jobs and fills shops with shoppers. Hopefully everyone walks or bikes rather than drives.
However, there have to be jobs and shops (and schools and parks…and ..) to make this work.
Even if this collection of projects is denser than somewhere else, the question is if the city is measurably richer (by quantifiable meters of spaces to live/work/rest/play) for it.