Peak CBD? Where the urban jobs are going

For Sydney, the ‘City and inner south’ stretches from the CBD south to the Airport, and as far west as Marrickville. 

And in Melbourne’s case, the “Melbourne inner” area follows the Maribyrnong River in the west, north to Essendon North, across to Coburg, Fairfield and south as far as Malvern and Ripponlea.

The point being that these are very generous boundaries for inner city areas. They are large enough to include dozens of inner city suburbs and some that are considered middle ring. And yet despite these large boundaries, it was the areas that lie beyond these inner city areas that have been powering the jobs growth performance of our major cities. This economic reality may not sit well with the true believers of inner urban supremacy, but it is statistically undeniable. 

The strongest performance of all was Melbourne West, which added over 60,000 jobs in the five year period. The Gold Coast, bouncing out of one its many cyclical downturns into an upswing, was second, followed by Brisbane Southside, followed by Parramatta. All are what we would generally define as middle to outer urban areas (the Gold Coast being either its own distinct city or part of the south east Queensland conurbation, depending on your point of view). 

If we look at the numbers in percentage terms, there are a significant number of SA4 regions that have grown by more than 10% in the period.