Map created by reddit user lanson15

The 3 areas in blue above, contain roughly 50% of Australia’s population, which means that the area in white contains the other 50%.

For those that don’t know their Australian geography the 3 areas are:

Sydney: 4,840,628 (20.61% of Australia’s population) Melbourne: 4,440,328 (18.90%) Brisbane: 2,274,460 (9.68%)

Total: 11,555,416 (49.19%)

So to be fair it’s just under half live in those three areas but how does this compare to other countries?

United States (by metropolitan area):

New York: 20,092,883 (6.3%) Los Angeles: 13,262,220 (4.2%) Chicago: 9,554,598 (3.0%)

Total: 42,909,701 (almost 2X Australia) but only 13.5% of the US population.

United Kingdom (by urban areas):

London: 9,787,426 (15.3%) Manchester: 2,553,379 (4.0%) Birmingham: 2,440,986 (3.8%)

Total: 14,781,791 but only 23.1% of the UK’s population

Canada (by metropolitan area):

Toronto: 5,583,064 (15.9%) Montreal: 3,824,221 (10.9%) Vancouver: 2,313,328 (6.6%)

Total: 11,720,613, just slightly more than Australia’s 3 biggest cities, but still only 33.1% of Canada’s population.

New Zealand (by urban areas):

Auckland: 1,413,700 (31.6%) Wellington: 393,600 (8.8%) Christchurch: 375,200 (8.4%)

Total: 2,182,500, smaller than even the smallest city above. And, while Auckland is the city with highest proportion of its country’s people, the 3 biggest combined still only make up 48.8% of New Zealand’s population.

Therefore, Australia is somewhat unique for having such a high concentration of it’s population located in its 3 biggest cities.

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