Top 10 Most Urbanist Suburbs in Australia

What are the most urbanist neighbourhoods in Australia, the southern hemisphere version of Canada? Let’s take a look based on the 2021 Australian census. We’re going to measure urbanism based on three categories. First, population density — the denser the better. This isn’t to say that anyone into cities and urbanism must always prefer the highest density environments, but it’s the simplest way to compare. Number two: affordability. The cheaper the median rent, the better. And the third category is transportation, under which we’re including three separate measures: the percentage of people who commute by transit, the percentage of people who commute by walking or cycling, and the number of cars owned per household, with lower being better.

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[otsoko]

I'm a Montrealer who just spent 3 months in Melbourne, living in one of the inner suburbs (Fitzroy - 12 minutes by tram to the CBD). I didn't have a car and never needed one - used the trams, cycled and had about 15 cafés with amazing espresso within a 10 minute walk. Melbourne does city transport WAY better than Montreal, and is much more bike friendly (side streets give bikes priority and motorists actually give way).

[BuildingBeautifully]

Great video! I learnt a lot about not just about my own country but also Canada (can't believe Canada doesn't have their own version of geographical boundaries that we call suburbs). I suspect those in inner Melbourne may still be using public transport despite being so close to the CBD due to the free tram zone that exists in Melbourne CBD.
I'm surprised that so many of Australia's most urbanist suburbs are so close to the CBD. Some of my favourite examples of urbanism in Sydney include Chatswood, Rhodes, Summer Hill, Wolli Creek and Lane Cove, all of which are located well outside of the CBD. But looking at your list, these suburbs don't actually rate all that high. I guess what I perceived is different to reality.
Sydney's government recently announced massive zoning changes to allow more density to be built in places that people want to live (around train stations), so we may see a lot more urbanist suburbs pop up in the decades to come. Hopefully.
Also, we Aussies don't use the word "downtown", we use "CBD". Not that it's really a mistake per se as we know what downtown means, but just a funny observation I made!
Finally, if you ever wanna do a collab together please hit me up, your channel is amazing :))

[zUJEjVD]

Interesting to note that in 2021 the median personal weekly income in Australia was $800 a week, yet not a single one of these median rents got below $300 a week. In the top 100 the only (real) place that got below $300 is South Coogee. Sure these numbers make more sense for families, but the densest areas are historically preferred by working singles.

Australia's housing market is broken.

[pollyjmorgan]

Our most recent census, in August 2021, isn't necessarily the best indicator for inner Melbourne, as it was held during one of our really long covid lockdowns. A lot of people had already moved out of some of the inner city suburbs because they'd lost their retail and hospitality jobs due to lockdowns, and couldn't afford to rent, so they moved back in with family in larger homes further out from the city. With universities and tafes closed for in person classes, students also moved away from relatively expensive (for them accomodation). Other people also moved because small apartments and townhouses with little to no private outdoor space were really impacting on their families (especially if they had younger children). At one stage we had a curfew and also people were only allowed out for an hour to do "exercise", shopping etc, so for a lot of families who previously used local parks a lot it became really difficult. The population in some local government areas in Melbourne fell. The public transit figures will also be seriously skewed as most people who were working were required to work from home unless they were not able to work from home and were employed in what was considered an "essential" job. I live in an inner Melbourne municipality and rent an apartment, & during lockdowns our medium density apartment block was 50% empty (it had previously been fully occupied prior to covid). Because lockdowns were particularly harsh and extensive in Melbourne, it may mean that more inner and middle suburbs in Melbourne would rank higher in your listing if a census was taken now. Although other Australian cities had lockdowns for covid, Melbourne had the harshest restrictions in place over the longest period of time of any Australian city (over 250 days between March 2020 and November 2021). Data for SA2s covering South Yarra, St Kilda, , Richmond and Docklands are very likely to be seriously skewed because of covid lockdowns.
There are, of course, going to be long term changes due to covid and lockdowns - but the population fall in the inner city is already rebounding. It does look like there's been a big impact on people using public transport (particularly to commute to work), as there's a lot of resistance from people to going back to office work full-time in the cbd.
One ongoing issue with Melbourne is we have terrible cycling infrastructure & there's huge resistance (& often a lot of backlash) to creating genuinely separated and protected cycling lanes on roads. Off-road cycling paths get heavily used, but there's a limit to where they can actually go.

[UltraXD.]

You don't know how excited I was to see Oh The Urbanity! post something about Australia. I had to look twice - seriously!

[acejk]

So cool with a citynerd style video from you guys! You can go far using data like this.

[shanejohnston]

Unexpected treat so thanks for the video. If you are curious about why Melbourne has some high public transport usage for those inner city areas, you can put that down to the free tram zone that covers the city/CBD and directly adjacent areas. Areas with high student populations like inner Melbourne (Melb. University and RMIT) and areas around UTS in Sydney (such as Ultimo/Chippendale) with lots of international students also rated highly. Was surprised to not see Docklands (Melb.) in the top 10 (it's at 19) but that is likely due to the water area between both sides of docklands bringing down the density and Pyrmont (Syd) (at 15) which only has one light rail connection to the adjacent Sydney CBD but is super for active walking to the city.

[tobyb]

Interesting video, thanks! The 2021 census probably isn't the best representation of especially public transport usage, as it was done while Melbourne and Sydney were in some sort of lock down. Most office workers were working from home.

[davethibault]

Not surprising to see that the suburb I grew up in ranked well below the 1200 mark. No wonder my teenage years were so miserable. I now live in Montreal and have zero regrets.

[Skip]

You talked about the similarities between Canada and Australia. I wish we in Canada could learn from Australia’s awesome suburban rail systems. Imagine electrified rail lines running bi-directional service 7 days a week in Vancouver and Montreal (I know Toronto is working on it with GO expansion)

[crowmob-yory]

Thank you for making this video. I'm visiting Australia in March and I definitely plan to check out the best urbanist neighbourhoods in Sydney. However, I'm spending most of my visit in the Jamboree Heights neighbourhood of Brisbane where my relatives live, which is much more car dependent according to the spreadsheet.

[StephanieHughesDesign]

I was born and raised in Sydney. What a mahvelous city it is. Some of the world's best mass transit systems. Railway stations everywhere almost. During the 2000 Olympics, Sydney installed a lot of additional railway stations (62) and also built a tunnel under Sydney harbour between CBD and North Sydney in record time. Almost unheard of anywhere else. However, I can no longer afford to live in my city of birth. I used to live in beautiful Paddo. I cannot afford to buy a Victorian Terrace home there now or anywhere else in Sydney. Buying a house in Sydney is incredibly expensive. If I ever returned to live in Sydney I would NOT own a car - there is NO need to. Don't get me started on renting - it's horrendous. They charge by the week it is that expensive. Good luck if you want to qualify for a mortgage.

[benlever]

Great video!
Even though a lot of them end up scoring quite low on the 'urbanism' scale, I think it's telling that the SA2s you included cover 17 million people, or about 65% of Australia's total population. This is despite your definition of 'too rural' excluding a bunch of semi-suburban SA2s (ie usually the suburbs on the edge of a city plus some adjacent farmland) - even by this relatively strict definition, the vast majority of Australians live in urban areas. There's a persistent image of Australia as a bush nation, often used as an excuse for why we can't have public or active transport, but we are in fact very urbanised!

[richardbaker]

As a fan of this channel and others like it I’ve always fantasised about someone talking about urbanism in Australia and here it is! So cool

[philpaine]

I was surprised that the Glebe district in Sydney wasn't mentioned, as it felt VERY urbanist to me, and was full of those old Aussie-style row houses with frilly Victorian era balconies. It does look like an ex-counterculture neighbourhood that became gentrified, but it still has lots of quirky stuff. A peculiar neighbourhood further to the west is Canada Bay. This was originally settled by convicts --- specifically French Canadians who had been arrested after the Rebellion of 1837 and shipped as exiles to Australia to toil as prisoners building roads and public buildings.
Another piece of Australo-Canadiana: I found an inukshuk in a small park in Brisbane, donated to the city by Canadians.
Hope you had a chance to sample the meat pies!

[ErinFromSydney]

I’m not surprised to see Melbourne being in the top four, where they have a free tram service running through the CBD, and Melbourne in general having an extensive tram network which is fantastic. They are starting to bring light rail back into Sydney and have some services coming into Western Sydney (which is sorely lacking in this sort of transport, but I for one would love to see more of this). Some areas are bringing in more active transport infrastructure, which is wonderful. Penrith City Council, for example, have done some great strides in recent years to bring in safe active transportation paths. It’s in the early stages, but I think this will be great in the coming years.

[davidandrews]

Whoa! Thanks for this video. I wasn’t expecting this.

[mrawesome]

As someone who lived in Wolli Creek for a while, catching the train everyday, and now lives in Potts Point, walking to work everyday, it's a nice new years treat to see them mentioned on an urbanist channel (for the right reasons that is).

[gbf]

Love this! would also love to see one covering cheaper suburbs with decent density aswell

[jasonarthurs]

Great start to the new year; looking forward to more.