Brisbane’s big boom: How many people are moving to your suburb?

Brisbane’s suburbs are housing more people per square kilometre than ever before as the city’s population booms.

In 2003, there was just one suburb in Brisbane with a population density of more than 5000 people per square kilometre: New Farm, at 5387.

But in 2023, that rose to nine suburbs: Kangaroo Point, Fortitude Valley, West End, South Brisbane, Spring Hill, Brisbane City, Newstead/Bowen Hills, New Farm and Highgate Hill.

The map below shows the population density for every suburb in the Brisbane region. If you click or touch an area on the map, it will show how many people are now living per square kilometre in your suburb.

Kangaroo Point now has the highest density, with 8790 people per square kilometre, followed by Fortitude Valley (8473) and West End (8385), data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics last week shows.

However, those figures pale in comparison to Sydney and Melbourne’s most densely populated suburbs.

Haymarket in downtown Sydney houses 20,955 people per square kilometre. The northern end of Melbourne’s CBD (the area from Melbourne Central to Queen Victoria Market) accommodates 38,401 residents per square kilometre.

“Brisbane has a long way to go to catch up to those hyper-dense places in Sydney and Melbourne, where there is much higher uptake of those 20, 30, 40-storey apartment towers,” KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said.

For all of Greater Brisbane, the average level of density went from 112 people per square kilometre in 2003 to 171 in 2023.

The population of Greater Brisbane increased by 81,200 people (3.1 per cent) during 2022-2023, the third-highest growth rate behind Perth (3.6 per cent) and Melbourne (3.3 per cent).

The four suburbs that recorded the biggest percentage increases in population during that period were Chambers Flat, Pallara/Willawong, Greenbank/North Maclean and Ripley, all of which are south of Brisbane’s CBD and recorded a more than 10 per cent increase in population.

Chambers Flat recorded an 18.4 per cent surge, or an increase of 1971 people in real terms.

Put another way, on average, five people moved to the area daily last year.

This map shows the population growth in 2022-2023 for every suburb in the Brisbane region. If you click or touch an area on the map, it will show the population of each suburb and how it has changed.

The majority of those new residents moved from another state.

“Interestingly, when you look at Sydney and Melbourne, they’re losing people to the rest of the country,” Rawnsley said.

“Brisbane and Perth were the only two major capital cities that had an inflow of people from the rest of the country, and that’s reflective of the affordability paradigm that Brisbane has, and a really strong jobs market.

“The weather is warmer and the housing is cheaper.”

Rawnsley said it was no surprise population growth was greatest in places where developers were able to roll out detached housing in large numbers.

That is true of Pallara, a multicultural suburb 30 minutes south of the CBD, that neighbours Forest Lake.

“Being that Pallara is a fairly new suburb, you can get a brand-new, four-bedroom house for under $1 million,” Matt Groves from ilookproperty said.

“That is highly attractive to families, especially if they’re moving from Sydney and Melbourne.”

However, the biggest contributor to Greater Brisbane’s overall population growth was net overseas migration (51,800). Net interstate migration came a distant second (15,300), followed by births (14,100).

“The speed of the population growth in Brisbane has been dramatic over the last 12 months,” Rawnsley said. “They’re all sort of arriving in a rush.”

This, he said, was due to COVID interrupting the flow of migrants for so many years.

Overseas migration fuelled population growth in Spring Hill and Brisbane City, which recorded the fifth- and sixth-highest percentage increases in population over the past year.

In fact, more locals moved away from Brisbane City than moved in, and the same was true for Spring Hill.

Queensland’s major regional areas also continued to grow quickly. The Gold Coast, with a record 735,000 residents, and the Sunshine Coast, now at 408,000, have grown by more than 70 per cent since the turn of the century.

The Gold Coast is Australia’s largest non-capital city, ahead of Newcastle in NSW and Queanbeyan near Canberra.