Inner cities sucking in residents in trend reversal

Fairfax

BIG CITY LIFE: Australians are becoming more urbanised, forsaking houses and sections for apartments and city glitz.

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Australians are forsaking the suburban backyard for an inner-city lifestyle in record numbers, a population study has found.

The report says under-40s and empty-nest baby boomers are reversing years of growth in the suburbs by moving downtown in the biggest cities.

It is the first time in the KPMG Population Report's 18-year history that the number of people moving to be closer to the CBD has rivalled those heading to suburban-growth corridors.

In Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, new residents moving to fashionable areas downtown topped 7000, 6800 and 6300, respectively, in the year to June 2006, exceeding the numbers in each city's fastest-growing suburbs.

"There is no greater measure of how Australian values have shifted in a single generation than in the numbers that track the rise of downtown living," author Bernard Salt said.

"The central core of our largest cities is emerging as a growth area that now competes with the outer suburbs and with parts of the beach as the preferred destination for Australians on the move."

The study also found that Melbourne was closing the gap on Sydney as Australia's largest metropolis, with its population growth nearly doubling that of the harbour city.

If those relative growth rates continued, Melbourne would overtake Sydney in 2028, the report says.

The resources boom helped make Perth the fastest-growing capital city with a 2.2 percent increase.

Adelaide had nearly doubled its growth – with an extra 11,542 new people, compared to the annual average of around 6000.

The Gold Coast was the quickest-expanding place in the nation, passing Newcastle to become the sixth-largest city with an extra 17,373 residents pushing the population past 500,000.

"The Gold Coast attracted more than double the number moving to the next fastest growing municipality in Australia, Perth's city of Wanneroo, which had 8112 new residents over the same time period," Mr Salt said.

The continuing seachange trend put seven Queensland coastal communities among the top 10 rapidly increasing towns.

Findings of population report