South East Queensland Australia is merging into one Mega-City

This is a very interesting article written by Sophie Foster from the Courier-Mail.

There are some very enlightening facts brought forward by; Demographer Bernard Salt;  Paul Bidwell from Master Builders Queensland;  Amanda Cooper Brisbane City Council planning committee chairman

SOUTH-EAST QUEENSLAND is on the cusp of morphing into a single megacity, with Brisbane in the middle of a Manhattan-style growth spurt and the lines blurring between the capital and the Gold and Sunshine coasts.

Construction cranes are filling the Brisbane skyline while new satellite suburbs will combine to make Queensland home to Australia's newest megacity within 35 years, when the "capital city" zone spread over a large swath of southeast Queensland by 2050.

Data provided by Brisbane City Council showed there were currently 35 projects under construction in the inner-city zone, with that activity set to double with 40 more residential-linked projects in the wings.

Demographer Bernard Salt

What we're now seeing is an Australian conurbation where you have three cities all merging into one, the nation's leading demographer Bernard Salt told The Courier­ Mail.

Brisbane will double by 2050 to more than four million people.

It will become the size of Melbourne by mid-century.

The Sunshine Coast will go from 300,000 to 600,000

The Gold Coast will double to 1.2 million.

It will create a broad conurbation somewhere around the size of Sydney stretching from Noosa all the way to Coolangatta.

There would be five to six million people spread over that 200km working as a one system.

He cited the New York Tri-State area as the world's most famous conurbation, and while Brisbane was not in that league, Mr. Salt said the "Manhattanisation" of the capital was already under way.

Mr. Salt said the SEQ conurbation would not mean that councils would be forced to merge, but it did require longer-term thinking and co-operation between them, ideally adopting a world city-type thinking with 30-year plans.

Brisbane City Council planning

The CBD alone was expected to see 50 new buildings in the current planning period, according to Brisbane City Council planning committee chairman Amanda Cooper.

"The city's economy is predicted to grow significantly over the next two decades, with demand for office, residential and hotel spaces in the city centre expected to translate into around 50 new buildings, "Cr Cooper said.

Master Builders Queensland deputy executive director Paul Bidwell said there was also excitement on the fringes, where there were signs of blurred lines developing between regions.

Greenfield developments including Yarrabilba, Springfield, Redlands, Coomera, Pimpama are the links, Mr. Bidwell said.

"They're where the opportunity is and where the growth is expected to come from and tie it all together. I'm no planner but it would reinforce this idea that we've got this conurbation going already,"

He said builders expected about 43,000 dwellings to go up in Queensland this year, a level not seen since the heyday just before the global finance crisis in 2007-08.

We think in 2016-17 and 17-18,  it will still stay above 40,000, primarily because we'll still have population growth. 

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