Talk:List of cities in Australia by population

Townsville population

Shouldn't the Townsville Statistical Division include Thuringowa? They are seperate Local Government Areas however they are no more two seperate cities than Sydney is ten cities. See dicsussion in Townsville, Queensland. WikiTownsvillian

Thanks for that edit Bongomanrae, however to be fair now that Townsville has been restored to 13th, Thuringowa should be removed from the list as its population is alredy counted, I have done this today, any objections please post here. WikiTownsvillian (8 Oct 06)

Just to note, Townsville and Thuringowa LGAs were merged in 2008, so this issue will not be ongoing for future ABS data releases ROxBo (talk) 11:26, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Archive

This page is a bit long, and quite old mostly. It needs to be archived. Can someone do it, as my attempts at doing this myself have not been great! ROxBo (talk) 11:29, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:45, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Critical issue

The key issue with "Population data in Australia" is that the various classifications of the ABS are not immediately intuitive and overlap considerably. This is the driver behind the repetitive edit/redits that each town or city seems to go through, e.g. (new) editor finds LGA Townsville population is bigger than that listed in Townsville wiki page, so makes well-meaning change (again, and again and again). I think it would be great to have an image (or animated gif?) PLUS a distinct and separate subheading that briefly explains statistical district/division/lga/urban area. The text is sort of already there, but fragmented. Cheers ROxBo (talk) 11:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Urban Centres

Does anyone know where I can find a list of the physical size (square kilometers) of Australia's "Urban Centres"? Are there any maps out there showing exactly what the Census defines as Urban Centres boundaries? --Criticalthinker (talk) 07:30, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Just go to the Census search page, key in the UCL you want and highlight it, and a map springs up to the left. If you follow it through and download the "Basic Community Profile" (rather than going to Quickstats) which is a 200k compressed Excel spreadsheet and click on any page number link on the contents page of it, the header section of the resulting page will contain the area. It is laborious and I wish I knew a better way, but that is how I get the areas for suburb articles. We should lobby ABS to produce a nice clean list on their site :) Orderinchaos 08:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I did it for Melbourne and found an area of 2,152.8 square kilometers. There has to be somewhere on each major 'city' page where it'd help to put this fact, or perhaps to add it to the chart on this page to give an idea not just of population but density. BTW, I only put 'city' in quotes because what they call cities in Australia, we call urban areas or metro areas, it seems. --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:36, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Missing cities

I noticed Ipswich and Gosford are missing and they are both over 150,000. matthewhicks93 —Preceding undated comment added 18:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC).

This is because neither are classified as Statistical Districts/Divisions or Urban Centres/Localities by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Gosford (which is wholly included in Sydney's SD for some reason) is in 23rd for Local Government Areas, while Ipswich (partly included in Brisbane's SD) is smaller than the 25th so not included.

WP:OR and WP:RS prevent us from straying from this. It's also important not to confuse LGA boundaries with cities - the City of Gosford includes the urban areas of Woy Woy/Umina and Erina/Terrigal/Avoca, which are significantly disconnected from the Gosford metropolitan block, while Ipswich includes towns which aren't even part of an urban area such as Rosewood, and includes suburbs detached from Ipswich proper which are more outgrowths from Brisbane. Orderinchaos 16:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a list of cities that isn't based on statistical districts because there are so many left out? matthewhicks93

Unfortunately, no - if you want to see them changed for the ABS census in 2011 (and there is actually a fair few of us who do), I would suggest lobbying the ABS. I asked them regarding the 2006 census a while ago and they have advised they can't make changes to the structure of that data now, but obviously changes can be made ahead of time for the next one - they made literally thousands of improvements between 2001 and 2006. The contact details can be found here (select "Other"). No other organisation in Australia produces a comparable list which would meet Wikipedia's reliable sources guideline at the present stage. Orderinchaos 11:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Matthewhicks93 (talk) 05:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Alice Springs not included anywhere, population at least 30,000. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.8.208.131 (talk) 04:23, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

According to the ABS the population of the Alice Springs LGA was only 23,893 in 2006 and now is only 27,877. The UC/L population was only 21,622 in 2006. There's no place for Alice Springs in this article. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:55, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Sunshine Coast population

Since amalgamation the poopulation of the Sunshine Coast regional council is wrong, it is much closer to 300k which would put it in the top 10 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.211.151.57 (talk) 11:06, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

However, neither of them are based on council boundaries, they are defined by the ABS and actually span parts of all three former LGAs. The statistical district used for the first is here, whilst the UC/L population is defined here. Orderinchaos 15:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you might find this link of interest [1] --Orestes1984 (talk) 06:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

That is local government areas. It even explicitly says so. By that standard, incidentally, Sunshine Coast isn't even a city, as it's a "region". Orderinchaos 06:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Woolongong is a region, Newcastle is a region, the Gold Coast is a region, none of those places are cities in their own right either all of them cover a large regional area, for that matter Queenbeyan is part of New South Wales and thus can't be part of the ACT/Canberra at the same time, the same issue comes up for Tweed Heads. The citation in this article doesn't even state which CBD is considered the Sunshine Coast. Is it Noosa heads, Maroochydore, Caloundra, Gympie, Nambour?? more relevant citations are needed. --Orestes1984 (talk) 01:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused as to what you're referring to. The Bathurst Region is as far as I'm aware the only region in NSW, while QLD adopted the convention for a heap of local governments on 15 March 2008. Wollongong's LGA is the City of Wollongong, but the city that the ABS measures includes much of Shellharbour and a bit of Kiama, and not *all* of Wollongong (it excludes more rural bits). Newcastle combines parts of (not all of) the City of Newcastle and the City of Lake Macquarie. Gold Coast is entirely within the Gold Coast City LGA, but excludes large sections of it (rural sections).

I suggest using the "Browse" tool on the census stats for 2006 at the ABS - you'll see what is being referred to under these terms. The ABS measure LGAs separately from other quantities (Statistical Districts and Urban Centres/Localities). It's quite precise, and to use anything else violates WP:OR, a core policy at Wikipedia. Orderinchaos 01:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

This is very old information, Bendigo is listed as the forth largest city in Victoria when it is in fact the third largest city in the state, it has a population of over 103 thousand, yet no one will change this! Ballarat is not the third largest city in Victoria, it is the third, it only has about 89 thousand people, which is a big difference, it needs to be changed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.171.70.115 (talk) 07:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This article uses information published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which is the source for all population data in Australia. The information is current as of June 2009, because that's the most accurate estimate available for all cities. --AussieLegend (talk) 08:40, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Wholesale edit for all australian cities!!

In this page there are 2 populations one urban and one metropolitan- shouldnt both populations be listed in the info bar in each cities article ie

Sydney Metro 4.5m Urban 3.5m

they do it for most cities accross the world in wiki but never any aussie ones! Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke193 (talk • contribs) 02:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

City vs Urban area

In the city list, there are "cities" like Gold Coast-Tweed, Canberra-Queanbeyan, Greater Hobart, Albury-Wodonga, Burnie-Devonport, Nowra-Bomaderry and Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Aren't these just the "urban areas"? Six of those seems to include two cities, and to my knowledge, Greater usually means the urban area. The city should just be Hobart.
Reading the text, I understand the listed ones are some kind of Statistical areas. Not sure though why these should be considered cities. 85.217.43.98 (talk) 18:26, 27 July 2011 (UTC)