City size

Just been debating affordable housing on Twitter. Greens and supporters are still arguing that the price of housing is awful, but whatever we do we must now allow cities to increase outwards.

One countered by saying that as so many people go to live in Sydney and Melbourne, that proves people don’t want to live in large sprawling cities.

I cheated and resorted to some facts, looking up respective sizes and populations.

It turns out that Auckland is three times the population of Auckland but 21 (yes 21) times the size in terms of area has a population density of 2,900/sq kms and Sydney 2,037 so Sydney is considerably more sprawling and less dense than Auckland. Guess we won’t be hearing again how Sydney (or Melbourne) is a case study for not increasing the urban limit.