Global Sydney
Sydney as a Global City
The City of Sydney is one of 43 local government areas within the Sydney Metropolitan area, defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as the Sydney Statistical Division. There is no overall government of Sydney, with the next level up being the State Government of New South Wales.
The City lies at the heart of the economic centre of Sydney and includes the metropolitan Central Business District and CBD fringe areas as well as being the location of over 60% of all hotel rooms, 4% of its population and an estimated one-third of Sydney’s economic activity.
Location
Sydney is located at 33 degrees and 52 minutes South of the equator and 151 degrees, 13 minutes East longitude.
Population and Density
The statistically defined area of Sydney had a total population of 4.4 million as of June 2008 (which places it about 75th in the world population rankings of cities) and covers an area of over 12,000 square kilometres. However, this includes all of the Blue Mountains and all lands between Wyong and Gosford to the north and Wollondilly to the south – and thus there is a great amount of undeveloped land and National parks. The ABS has calculated that the urban centre portion of the Sydney Statistical Division has a density of 2,000 persons per square kilometre.
Sydney has the highest density of Australia’s major cities. In comparison, the urban centre of Melbourne has a density of 1,600 persons per square kilometre, and Perth, 1,200 persons per square kilometre. However, on an international comparison, Sydney is not as dense as comparable Asian (with a density of 10,000 or more persons per square kilometre) and European cities (where densities can average 4,000 persons per square kilometre), but is more dense than the ‘sprawl’ cities in the United States, where metropolitan densities average about 1,000 persons per square kilometre.
Sydney’s population represents some 20.5% of the Australian population. In the five years to 2008, it grew by 210,000 or more than 40,000 annually. This represents just 13.6% of Australia’s population growth in this period.
Sydney Background
Although the site on which it is located has been inhabited for more than 30,000 years by the Eora tribe of the Aboriginal peoples, in its built form Sydney is a young city by European and Asian standards, having been colonised by the English in 1788. Whilst it has many fine examples of 19th Century colonial architecture, it is principally recognisable by two far more recent icons, the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.
Up until the mid 1970s, Sydney remained relatively culturally isolated from its Asian regional position in the globe, drawing migrants initially from Britain and Ireland and in its post-war manufacturing boom from countries in continental Europe, notably Italy, Greece and the former Republic of Yugoslavia. This isolation extended economically with relatively high tariff protection barriers to support a strong manufacturing base built upon its raw materials and agricultural exports.
However, in recent times, it has opened up considerably, opening its migration doors to people from most countries around the world, particularly from its Asian neighbours to the north. Sydney is now one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world with people drawn from around the world. Its cosmopolitan character is reflected in the range of languages spoken, restaurants and community groups.
Its population has benefited from an open and extensive education system that has provided it with one of the highest rates of participation at both secondary and tertiary level. The result is a highly-skilled and educated workforce. The skill-base has been enhanced by a high level of social cohesion and political stability which has been achieved through basic value-systems, a “fair-go Mate” attitude and effective social capital infrastructure.
Economic Profile
Sydney is the prime economic driver of the Australian economy. The Sydney metropolitan area has a GDP of approximately $250 billion per year. This is approximately one-quarter of the Australian national GDP and two-thirds of the NSW state GDP. According to a study by PriceWaterhouse, this annual output would place it about 26th in economic size among the world’s cities. This puts in the company of Moscow, Madrid and Seattle. It was ranked in the top 10 (about 8th) among Asian-Pacific cities.
Like the global economy, Sydney’s economy has shifted structurally from agricultural/resource distribution to manufacturing and through to a concentration on the services sector. In particular, with the location of the Australian Stock Exchange and the establishment of the Futures Exchange, it has become Australia’s dominant financial centre with over 65% of such activity being undertaken in Sydney. Of all foreign and domestic banks in Australia, 82% are headquartered in Sydney. In part-consequence, it has also become highly specialised in legal, accounting and other business services, with over a third of all Australian employment in legal firms located in Sydney. In more recent times, it has attracted a high proportion of information technology firms and as a consequence dominates Australian employment in internet media design and production. Sydney also has a disproportionately higher percentage of workers in creative industries, compared to other major Australian cities.
The financial services workforce in Sydney is nearly half the size of London’s and more than 40% of the size of New York City’s. A number of other studies based on capital flows and transactions have placed Sydney about 10th and 11th in the world in significance as a financial centre.
Sydney is home to approximately 60% of all Asia Pacific regional headquarters located in Australia; 70% of Property and Business services regional offices; and, nearly 75% of all Information and Communications Technologies Regional headquarters.
As a consequence of the dominance of these industries and its global connectivity, Sydney has 32% of Australia’s Business, Human Resources and Marketing managers, and 34% of the nation’s legal, accounting and computing professionals. It is also home to over 28% of Australia’s arts and social professionals.
Global Profile
Sydney is considered an ‘alpha+’ world city, one of only nine, according to the Loughborough University ‘Global and World Cities’ group data inventory, and is ranked as the 7th most connected city to the global economy, behind New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore.
- Alpha cities | PDF 60Kb
The Japan-based Mori Memorial foundation released a comprehensive ranking of the world’s major cities in its Global Power City Index (GPCI) 2009. Among thirty-five of the world’s major cities, Sydney was ranked 14th overall, in the company of Toronto, Frankfurt and Los Angeles, behind the familiar New York, London, and Paris and Tokyo leaders. Within the Asia-Pacific region, Sydney ranked 5th behind Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul, but ahead of Shanghai, Osaka and Beijing. Foreign Policy’s 2008 Global Cities index ranked it 16th amongst significant global cities. Notably, Sydney was in the top 10 cities in the rankings based on ‘Ecology and the Environment’ and ‘Cultural Interaction’.
However, it was less regarded for ‘Accessibility’, where it was judged in the bottom seven of the 35 cities examined.
The MasterCard survey of what it considers the world’s 75 major commercial and financial centres placed Sydney 12th in 2008, an increase in its ranking of 14th in 2007.
Visitor Gateway
Sydney is Australia’s iconic face to the world, its international visitor flag-bearer, boasting seven of Australia’s top ten most popular international visitor attractions.
In the year to June 2009, 2.6 million international visitors came to the Sydney metropolitan area. This represented more than half of all international visitors to Australia. These visitors stayed a total of 51.5 million guest nights. Thus, on any one night there are over 140,000 international visitors staying in Sydney. At an average expenditure over $2000 per visitor, they generated $5.5 billion of direct expenditure, or approximately one-third of Australia’s international tourism earnings.
Sydney was the preferred destination of travellers from Eastern Asia, Europe and North America, with over 60% of travellers to Australia coming from these areas. This included over 300,000 from China and Hong Kong. A total of 186,000 international visitors came to Sydney for educational purposes.
In addition, Sydney attracted another seven million domestic overnight visitors in the year to June 2009. These Australian visitors stayed a total of 19.7 million visitor nights, and spent a total of $3.5 billion, not including airfares and long distance transport costs. This represented more than 10% of all domestic overnight visitors in Australia in the 2008-09 year.
This level of international attraction reflects its popularity as a tourist destination. Readers surveys in international traveller magazines have consistently placed Sydney as a favourite city destination in the last decade and a half. These include both the Conde Naste UK-based Traveller publication and its US-based Traveler publication.
In both 2007 and 2008 Sydney was rated the top city brand in the world by the Anholt-GfK Roper City Brand Index, ahead of Paris, London, New York, Rome and Barcelona. This survey, of more than 10,000 people from 20 countries across the globe, asks participants to judge cities on the basis of Presence, Place, Prerequisites, People, Pulse and Potential. According to the survey directors, this result was largely due to Sydney’s ability to score highly on perception in all categories, rather than being outstandingly good in any – its ‘well-rounded’ perception.
In 2009, Sydney has been overtaken by Paris for the top City Brand spot. Sydney was still ranked in first place in the People, Pace, and Prerequisites categories. However, Paris’ big lead over Sydney in the Presence and Pulse dimensions were sufficient to push Paris into the top position overall.
Quality of Life
With increased globalisation of the national economy and ageing of the population on the global scale, the demand for skilled labour able to participate in that knowledge-based economy is becoming increasingly scarce. Education programs are an important adjunct to training this new workforce but immigration and attracting skilled workers are becoming an increasingly important aspect of a city’s global competitiveness. For that reason business and governments around the world are recognising the economic value of quality of life indicators.
The Mercer Human Resources consulting group conducts an annual Quality-of-Life survey designed to provide an objective assessment of quality of living in 235 cities worldwide. It is largely a quantitative rather than qualitative assessment.
The outputs of the research are used to produce a quality of living city ranking to compare the difference in quality of living in different cities. The ranking is based on an assessment and evaluation of 39 quality of life determinants in areas ranging from the natural environment to infrastructure and transportation socio-cultural environment, medical and health considerations amongst others.
All Australian capital cities have been ranked in the top 35 of these 235 cities for each year for the last five years. For 2009, Sydney heads the rankings of Australian cities with a world-wide ranking of 10th.
The other major Quality-of-Living survey of international cities is conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This annual report also consistently places Australia’s major cities amongst the world’s most liveable cities.
For the 2009 study, cities were assessed on the basis of stability, health care, education, infrastructure and cultural and environment. Sydney shared ninth ranking with Zurich.
However, both studies, Mercer and EIU, whilst still ranking Australian cities highly, have recorded a drop in ranking in recent years. Compared with 2004, all the Australian cities have slipped backwards. On the EUI report, Sydney has gone from equal 6th to 9th, and in the Mercer rankings of 235 cities, Sydney has slipped from 5th to 10th over the last five years. The cities which have supplanted the Australian cities tend to be cities which have invested in further infrastructure.
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Last Updated: Thursday 8 April, 2010
