What makes a city?

[Guest The Pom Queen]

Having a discussion on another thread about what makes an Australian City I was shocked to read you only need a population of 1,000 surely this must be wrong. For example like another member said Cairns has a population of over 150,000 but I wouldn't say it's a city but the powers that be say it is.

 

Here is what I read about what makes a city

source https://www.thoughtco.com/difference-between-a-city-and-a-town-4069700

HOW URBAN AREAS ARE DEFINED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

It is difficult to compare countries based on the percentage of urban population. Many countries have different definitions of the population size necessary to make a community "urban."

 

For example, in Sweden and Denmark, a village of 200 residents is considered to be an "urban" population but it takes 30,000 residents to make a city in Japan. Most other countries fall somewhere in between.

• Australia and Canada have a minimum of 1000 citizens.
• Israel and France have a minimum of 2000 citizens.
• The United States and Mexico have a minimum of 2500 citizens.

Due to these differences, we have a problem with comparisons. Let us assume that in Japan and in Denmark there are 100 villages of 250 people each. In Denmark, all of these 25,000 people are counted as "urban" residents but in Japan, the residents of these 100 villages are all "rural" populations. Similarly, a single city with a population of 25,000 would be an urban area in Denmark but not in Japan.

Japan is 78% and Denmark is 85% urbanized. Unless we are aware of what size of a population makes an area urban we can not simply compare the two percentages and say "Denmark is more urbanized than Japan."

The following table includes the minimum population that is considered "urban" in a sampling of countries throughout the world. It also lists the percent of the country's residents which are "urbanized."

Notice that some countries with a higher minimum population have a lower percentage of urbanized population.

Also, note that the urban population in almost every country is rising, some more significantly than others. This is a modern trend that has been noted over the last few decades and is most often attributed to people moving to cities to pursue work.

[Keith and Linda]

Looks like size does not matter in the UK.

What is British City Status?

City Status is a rare honour granted by the monarch on the advice of the Government by letters patent (an open letter, not a charter) normally on special royal occasions. There is no set criteria as in other countries.  

The government recently invited towns, through their local councils, to apply for city status in a competition to create a new city to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. 25 Towns have applied (see Table 3 below) and the three winners announced on 14 March were Perth in Scotland, Chelmsford in England and St. Asaph in Wales.

Does a town need a cathedral to become a city?

NO.  All UK towns (through their local council) can apply to become a city, whether they have an Anglican cathedral or not.  There are 18 cities without a cathedral and 13 towns which have an Anglican cathedral but do not have city status. See the tables in the Cathedrals section  for the complete lists.

Henry VIII created 6 cathedral towns in the 1540's and gave them all city status by letters patent. This created the association between having a cathedral and city status and the other towns with cathedrals at the time also became to be considered cities since "time immemorial". 

The government in the 1880's tried to maintain the link, when new cathedrals were founded in Liverpool, Wakefield and Newcastle, by giving all three towns city status soon after. This became increasingly more difficult to do when the small village of Southwell got a Cathedral in 1884 and big cities like Birmingham and Belfast without cathedrals were still waiting for city status. In the end government finally broke the link between cathedrals and cities when they decided Belfast and Birmingham could become cities without cathedrals and Southwell would remain a town. Both Birmingham and Belfast eventually did get Anglican cathedrals some years after gaining city status.

[Quoll]

I think Australia classifies groups of 1000 as Significant Urban Areas, not necessarily ""cities". Cities defined as

• (a) have a population of at least 25,000 persons and be an independent centre of population; not being a suburb, whether residential, industrial, commercial or maritime, of any other council area or centre of population; or
• (b) have a population of at least 150,000, and have a distinct character and entity as a centre of population beyond what would normally be regarded as being of local or suburban significance only; or
• (c) satisfy the criteria specified in paragraphs (a) or (b) apart from the population criteria, and be a homogenous centre of importance as a focus of regional commercial, governmental or cultural activity beyond that which would normally be regarded as local, suburban, or subsidiary to another nearby centre.^[3]
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[Guest The Pom Queen]

@Quoll where did you find that Hun I couldn't find anything when searching

[Collie]

Yep - different definitions in different countries and depends on concentration of population also.  No hard and fast rule.  Ireland has something about having a cathedral which classifies places like Kilkenny and Waterford as cities (which is ridiculous).

All about scale for me. Personally in 2017 and thinking in international terms, anywhere with <500k people within say a 50km radius for me is a town (large, medium, small) not a city.  If you can walk around the city centre in 15 minutes, that doesn't count either.  Being large enough to have direct international connections could be useful another criteria.

In Australia I would classify the following as cities:

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide.  Some of the next tier may qualify in the future although not if Mr Dutton has his way.

Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, Newcastle, GC (although really an extension of Brizzy), Townsville. Geelong (although is this an extension of Melbs)

Ireland effectively has 1 city by an international scale, Dublin.  Belfast would be next (technically NI), then Cork, Limerick, Galway etc (all great places but hard to call them cities by international standards).

I worked on a regional franchise strategy for a national business about 12 years ago.  Our (self defined) benchmark was 100k residences within 100km for it to be viable.  Not necessarily cities but regional towns large enough to be able to support a franchise.  Cairns was actually our benchmark.

[NickyNook]

The 'City of the Blue Mountains' always makes me laugh.

A huge area - the bulk of which comprises inaccessible bushland, where no man has ever walked - but because the population of the myriad, small settlements adds up to some magic number, they can call themselves a 'city'. 

It's bonkers..

 

[Quoll]

8 hours ago, The Pom Queen said:

@Quoll where did you find that Hun I couldn't find anything when searching

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia

[Guest The Pom Queen]

1 hour ago, Quoll said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia

Doh why didn't I check wiki lol. 

[Guest The Pom Queen]

Over the past few weeks I have looked at the outlook for Australia’s 10 largest cities. All are growing; some faster than others. All are expected to grow into the future albeit at differential rates.

The common themes driving big-city growth in this country appear to be lifestyle, affordability and governance. I thought that last point would get your attention; I’ll come back to it later.

This week I’m looking at the cities ranked 11-20 in the Australian urban system ranging from Wollongong (2016 population 296,000) to Albury-Wodonga (90,000). The smaller capitals of Hobart (211,000) and Darwin (124,000) make this list as do a series of big provincial cities including Geelong (191,000), Townsville (182,000), Cairns (150,000), Toowoomba (115,000), Ballarat (102,000) and Bendigo (95,000).

The definition of each city is relatively tight: Geelong, for example, includes Lara and Leopold but not distant satellites such as Ocean Grove and Torquay.

Sadly I missed Ballarat’s milestone of passing the 100,000 mark at some point early last year. These things don’t happen very often in regional Australia.

Bendigo should get to the 100,000 mark by 2020. Wollongong will pass the 300,000 mark later this year. Geelong will pass 200,000 next year. I wonder whether cities in other nations get a thrill at seeing their population speedo tick into a significant number.

There are two standout cities in this category of Australian city, Geelong and Ballarat, which both added 2.1 per cent to their population base over the year to June 2016. This converted to growth of 4000 net extra residents for Geelong and 2100 for Ballarat.

If Melbourne’s breakneck growth of 108,000 this year could have been partially siphoned off to Geelong and Ballarat, doubling each city’s growth, this would have reduced Melbourne’s growth by 6000. Melbourne growing at 102,000 a year is still a breakneck speed and it would require Geelong and Ballarat to grow at an unsustainable rate.

My conclusion is that decentralisation should not be pursued as a way to ease the burden of metropolitan growth. Decentralisation should be pursued for the purpose of regional development, not metropolitan containment.

The weakest growth rates of less than 1 per cent over the past 12 months related to Darwin (0.5 per cent), Toowoomba (0.6 per cent) and Hobart (0.8 per cent). These poor growth-rate figures make a difference to the local property ­industry.

Darwin’s growth rate equates to 582 net extra residents over 12 months; if this city had have expanded as fast as Geelong and Ballarat in this year then the number added would have been 2600, or around a net extra 2000 people converting into a net extra 1000 dwellings.

I imagine it’s a tough time for tradies in Darwin at the moment; pity the city isn’t growing faster to soak up excess capacity.

But property investment and development is more concerned with the medium-term future than with the recent past. The best markets to be in (from a property development point of view) are those that rise steadily over a decade. By comparing actual growth over the 10 years to 2016 with the projected growth over the 10 years to 2026 it is possible to get just such a perspective.

Of the 11 cities cited six are expected to add more people over the next 10 years than they added over the last 10 years. They include Geelong, Townsville, Darwin, Toowoomba, Ballarat and Bendigo. I agree with the outlook for the three Victorian cities and also with Darwin. Toowoomba and Townsville may accelerate in the future but not in the short term; these cities have been affected by flood and economic disruption. But they offer good lifestyle, quality and affordable housing and solid local institutions such as the military, universities and public administration.

Cities in this category expected to slow down in their rate of growth include Wollongong, Hobart, Cairns and Albury-­Wodonga. In each case there is no game-changer that could be expected to trigger heightened growth. Can Cairns secure direct air links with Guangzhou? Can Hobart develop an ag-tech start-up hub? Can Wollongong replicate Newcastle’s reinvention following the closure of the BHP mill in 1999? And can Albury-Wodonga leverage benefit from Snowy 2.0?

But in some respects the outlook for each city is not solely a function of local ingenuity and deal-doing at the mayoral level, despite what mayors say when figures are pointing in the right direction. I think that often the rate of growth is determined by state performance. If Tassie struggles then Hobart struggles; if Tassie does well then Hobart, as the state’s primary demographic vessel, does well. Similarly if Victoria and Melbourne are booming then Geelong and Ballarat also boom.

Some call this the “overspill ­effect” and especially when provincial cities are located within striking distance of the capital. Another term that could be used is the trickle-down effect.

Victoria gets its settings right (largely due to strategic thinking and planning in the Kennett years) and the state’s capital and near provincial cities do well. The reverse happens in Queensland. The mining boom subsides and as a consequence growth in the state’s non-lifestyle cities falters. Darwin is the Northern Territory. If mining subsides in the Top End then Darwin subsides.

This is what I mean by governance. If you have mayoral ambitions or if you are thinking about strategic business investment over the next decade then consider the governance cycle of the state that contains your favoured city of operation.

A state with coffers on the rise due to strengthening mining royalties and dizzying property taxes is probably a good place to start. A city in a state where these factors are flailing if not falling is a tough place to succeed for perhaps as long as a decade. I think the Gold Coast operates on cycles of a decade. It’s only now emerging from its post-GFC downfall.

This is not to say there aren’t business opportunities in sluggish and slow-growing markets. Competitors folding offers scope to command an even greater share of the market and position for recovery. And this is because the beauty of being in property in a blessed place such as Australia is that through the gift of continued immigration the sheer addition of people eventually lifts the demand for housing.

Of course get the timing wrong and your business can bleed to death waiting for the market to recover. And so in this sense it is very much in the interests of the property industry in every city and in every suburb to retain a big-picture view as to where the market sits in relation to the economic cycle of the state and indeed the nation. Always keep a weather eye on the economic horizon.

Bernard Salt is managing director of The Demographics Group; research by Simon Kuestenmacher research director The Demographics Group.

[starlight7]

Very interesting analysis thanks PQ. There are areas like Warragul too which seem to be developing at a rate of knots . Quite a long way from Melbourne but somehow connected. Probably in the future their growth may slow a bit because of the lack of government support for the power industry in the LaTrobe valley and consequent drop off in employment opportunities. Really wish we had a better state government with more foresight. Too much to ask I suppose.


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[Parley]

So my little suburb is actually a city ?