Melbourne Becomes Australia’s Biggest City After Boundary Tweak
The city skyline in Melbourne, Australia.
Photographer: William West/AFP/Getty Images
Melbourne has quietly overtaken Sydney to become Australia’s most populous city, thanks to a slight tweak to where a geographical boundary is drawn.
The city overtook its northern rival on a technicality after the Australian Bureau of Statistics added a new district to its ‘significant urban area’ population measure. That showed Melbourne was home to 4.88 million people in 2021 — 18,700 more than Sydney — following the inclusion of the area of Melton.