This change represents a marked change from past trends.
Bureau of Statistics population figures show that despite the perceived failure of the Melbourne 2030 plan, road congestion, public transport overcrowding, and opposition by councils and resident groups to higher-density redevelopments, buyer demand is bringing growth.
For the sixth year in a row, Melbourne has had the biggest growth of any Australian city. Its population grew by 61,719 or 1.65%, still well ahead of a resurgent Sydney (51,995 or 1.2%), and the boom cities of Brisbane (37,194 or 2%) and Perth (35,259 or 2.3%).
Over six years, Melbourne's population has swollen by 334,467 or nearly 10% — more than it grew in the entire decade of the 1990s.
Most of the growth has taken place on the urban fringe, in suburbs such as Werribee, Caroline Springs, Craigieburn, South Morang, Berwick, Cranbourne and Langwarrin.
But the population of what the Bureau of Statistics defines as inner Melbourne — roughly speaking, the area within five kilometres or so or the GPO — has also shot up, growing by 51,541 or 21% in six years.
However, while Southbank and Docklands obviously shot up, they accounted for only a fifth of inner Melbourne's growth. The rest took place in upper storeys all through the CBD, in Port Melbourne and along the bayside, and in inner suburbs wherever developers could find a niche.
That trend began in the 1990s, but since 2000 it has begun spreading into the inner-middle suburbs such as Williamstown, Footscray, Hawthorn and Caulfield. On a rough definition drawn from the bureau's data, the suburbs of Melbourne between five and 10 kilometres of the GPO added only 1000 or so people a year in the 1990s, but are now adding 6000 to 7000 a year — a level of population growth they have not seen since the 1920s.
It is a similar story for the ring of suburbs between 10 and 15 kilometres of the city. In the 1990s they added 1000 people a year; now they are adding 6000 a year. Box Hill's population, for instance, has grown by 2300 in the past three years.
Overall, the proportion of Melbourne's population growth occurring within roughly 20 kilometres of the GPO has jumped from 24% in the first half of the 1990s to 41% in the three years to June 2007.
Of the 40 local areas the bureau defines as being within 20 kilometres of the GPO, only Broadmeadows is still losing population. A generation ago, most of them were.