THE THIRD CITY OF THE SOUTH.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 254, 20 July 1908, Page 3

THE THIRD CITY OF THE SOUTH.

Sydney, has j now, .for,'a number of years '(says, the' Sydney. '.'Telegraph"),' ' beenthe .third -most populous .city, south of . the Equaltor, being - surpassed only by J Buenos Ayrefe aiid 'Rio de Janeiro. It'topped Melbourne ii 1902, and is now 40,00Q ahead. It has, too'* the' largest white population jn the British Empire outside the United .Kingdom ; 'but the comparisons', . sometimes. .drawn-. ..with ..such cities : and Birmingham, are one-sided, because the residential'.'suburbs of those ''cities'are not similarly .included. The other day Mr. H. A. Smith, Acting-Chief Assistant 1 of the-New. South Wales■ Bureau of Statistics, placed: before., the Royal Cominission oil .City Improvement -. an interesting tablo of-the, growth of . the chief cities in Australia, America, and. Europe, and, at th£ same .time,'- he gav'eithe population of Sydnej within a; 13-mile raditis of the G.P.O. Sydnej has certainly ■nofc'grown at the same pace as Buenos Ayres or Rio'. Buenos Ayres has ini cro'ased at about 31,900 people per annum or ai ; a meaivaunual rate of 3.9 per cent., tho popula r tion in 1904 being 950,981, and now prob • ably 1,000,000.' In Rio tho average.expan . sion has been over 18,000 annually, or 2.8 pei 1 cent., and the total in 1906 was-811,265. It -• Sydney, the total within tho conventiona . boundaries was, at tho, closo of last year j 577,180, and. tho average growth in tho pas 1 seven years has oxcecdcd 12,750, or. 2.5, pe , cent. Within the 13-mile radius tho total ii i' 628,900, and-the growth has been nearl; f 14,700 per annum, or 2.6 per cent., Mel r bourno, the'fourth city south of tho liiho, ha - a population of 533,000, but tho growth ove - the past 17 years has averaged only abou t 2770, or 0.55 per cent. Sydney lias expandei 1 faster than Montreal or Toronto, and tho per - centage .of growth has been greater..than ii s English or most. Continental cities, but no , so great as those,-bf'Now York or Chicago r On the European Continent, too,. Dresdei 3 and Budapest have shown, a greater relate i expansion. Greater London, with it i 6,581,402 persons , at-the .date, of the. 190 a census, 'showed a'ten year'B 1 average growtl i pi 1,6 per cent.