City of Melbourne's economy now larger than South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT combined

City of Melbourne's economy now larger than South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT combined
Alastair TaylorNovember 18, 2019

The level of economic activity contained within the 37.7 square kilometres that make up the municipal area of the City of Melbourne has surpassed $100 billion for the first time and in 2018 this was larger than the entire states of South Australia and Tasmania as well as the Australian Capital Territory.

City of Melbourne's own Census of Land Use and Employment (CLUE) recorded the Gross Local Product for the municipality grew more than 5% to reach $100.3 billion. South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory's Gross State Products for the same time period totalled $96 billion.

According to the 2018 CLUE, 479,200 jobs across almost 17,000 business are now contained within the City of Melbourne and over the past decade employment in Docklands has increased 243% or an increase in 51,600 jobs.

Lord Mayor Sally Capp said,

"We've added 12,630 new dwellings to the CBD in the past ten years. The growth in our CBD alone is the equivalent of the entire amount of housing within the City of Adelaide."

The City of Melbourne now has 83,080 residential dwellings, 67,420 of which are apartments.

City of Melbourne's economy now larger than South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT combined
Infographic on CLUE's 2018 results. Image: City of Melbourne

Office space in the City of Melbourne has increased by 10% over the past decade, clocking an extra 500,000 square metres on the land use census. Back in 2018, predictions were that City of Melbourne's office supply would increase by 170,000 square metres in 2019 and in 2020, supply would increase by another 290,000 square metres.

In terms of projects in the pipeline, the suburb 'Melbourne' (Postcodes 3000 and 3004) has 47 projects on the Urban.com.au database.

In Southbank, there are 35 projects at various stages in the development pipeline. Projects such as Australia 108 which will be the city's next tallest building and is nearing the end of its construction phase, has had residents living in the building - at lower levels - for well over a year.

Docklands, nearing completion still registers 17 projects on the Urban.com.au database with Lend Lease recently announcing what its final buildings will look like in Victoria Harbour.

Multiple state government-focused transport projects, such as extending trams from Docklands onto the southern bank of the Yarra, are or have had some level of planning completed to drive the growth into Fishermans Bend. Precinct plans for the massive 480-hectare urban redevelopment zone have been underway since the Fishermans Bend framework was released in mid-2018.

Alastair Taylor

Alastair Taylor is a co-founder of Urban.com.au. Now a freelance writer, Alastair focuses on the intersection of public transport, public policy and related impacts on medium and high-density development.

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