The 100 Most Densely Populated Suburbs in New Zealand

In this post, I will be looking at most densely populated suburbs (area units) in New Zealand, or the area units that have the highest number of people per square kilometre.

This analysis has been done by extracting data on the population of area units in New Zealand. These figures have been sourced from Statistics New Zealand, and are estimates of each area’s population as at the 30^th of June 2014. I have also sourced data on the land area of each area unit, measured in square kilometres.

For starters, the 10 most densely populated suburbs are listed below:

 

Of the ten most densely populated suburbs, six are in Auckland and four are in Wellington. It is very interesting to note that Auckland Central East and West have a much higher density than other suburbs in this list, at around 12,000 people per square kilometre.

If we expand this list to look at the 100 most densely populated suburbs, we find the following results:

 

These 100 suburbs contain 10% of New Zealand’s total population, but contain only 0.0379% of New Zealand’s total land area. As you would expect, Auckland dominates this list. Only 16 of the top 100 are outside Auckland, and only one suburb is outside the three main centres (Insoll, Hamilton).

I am a little bit surprised by these figures. Obviously I was expecting Auckland to dominate this list, but I thought I would see more suburbs from Christchurch and Wellington, and possibly a couple from Dunedin or Tauranga.

It would be very interesting to see how the population density of these areas has changed over the last few years, and this might be something I investigate in a future post.