The chart above shows the urban area of each city with a population of over one million. The urban area has been normalized so as to avoid any inconsistencies with how cities and their metropolitan areas are defined by their governments. Each urban area has similar characteristics making this the definitive method with which to compare cities across various countries. All urban areas with over one million people in Oceania belong to either Australia or New Zealand.
Findings
- The difference between the urban area with the greatest size, Melbourne, and the urban area with the least, Auckland, is 2,019 square kilometers (779.54 square miles).
- Melbourne has 4.85 times the urban area that Auckland does.
- The median size of urban area with a minimum population of one million in Oceania is 1,565.00 square kilometers (604.25 square miles) and the mean 1,447.14 square kilometers (558.75 square miles).
Caveats
- Data is from 2020.
- The methodology for how these urban areas have been defined can be found in the source link below. As of this writing this is the most reliable way to compare urban areas throughout the world.
- Some of these urban areas span several states, and the state that is being used here is the one where the core of the urban area is located. For instance, Milan's urban area spans both Italy and Switzerland, but since the core of the urban area is in Italy it would be listed as an Italian urban area and not a Swiss one.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest whole.
Details
Only two of the 25 Oceanian states have urban areas with at least one million people. Of these, Nigeria has six and New Zealand has one.
Melbourne makes up one-quarter of the total area of Oceanian urban areas with over one million inhabitants at 25.10%. It, along with Sydney make up nearly one-half of the total area of Oceanian urban areas with over one million inhabitants at 45.20%. Adding in Brisbane brings it up to just under two-thirds at 64.66%.
All four urban areas with a population of over one million people that have an urban area of over 1,000 square kilometers are located in Australia. The one urban area with a population of over one million people that has an area less than 600 square kilometers is located in New Zealand.
Australia has the largest area covered by its urban areas of over one million people with a total of 3,709 square kilometers (1,432.05 square miles) distributed among its six urban areas. New Zealand has the second largest area covered by its urban areas of over one million people with a total of 202 square kilometers (77.99 square miles) distributed among its one urban area.
American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Norfolk Island, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna do not have any urban areas with a population of over one million inhabitants.
Sources
Demographia. 2021. "Demographia World Urban Areas: 16th Annual Edition." Accessed March 9, 2021. http://demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf.