People and Prestige

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 319, 2 April 1928, Page 8

People and Prestige

AUCKLAND’S POPULATION Place Among the World's Cities

WERE some magic power to transport Auckland to France the city would take its place as the fifth in the Republic. On a population basis its estimated population, now 210,000, places Auckland alongside some of the world s oldes cities, and actually in advance of many.

rpHE 1926 census disclosed that Auckland’s population was 192,1 1 6. A year later, in April, 1927, the Statistics Department estimated that the population of the city had risen to 202,400, and this figure is published in the Year Book, as well as in Whitaker’s Almanac, which is probably the most authoritative publication dealing with the world's population figures. The Increase during the year was just over 10,000, and it is therefore

safe to assume that in the succeeding 12 months, up to April, 1925, the population of Greater Auckland has risen to 210,000. Except for some very progressive cities in Central and Western America, and the larger cities of Australia, Auckland has increased its population at a rate that has not often been equalled over a long period. Its progress has left scores of older cities standing, and if a corresponding ratio of increase is maintained for the future, it is a simple matter to visualise the time when Auckland’s people will number half a million. Auckland’s Place

Some of the ancient cities with which Auckland can now claim equality are Helsingfors (Finland), Venice and Bologna (Italy), Teheran (Persia), Oporto (Portugal), Seville (Spain), Zurich (Switzerland) and Belgrade Yugoslavia.

Ancient centres of learning and culture have been outstripped, in the race toward present-day eminence, by the young and virile towns of the new world. Commanding examples of progress are New York. Chicago, Sydney and Melbourne. To New Zealanders Sydney is the most interesting. With a population of 1.100,000, it has attained a place in the hierarchy of the world's cities, and is nineteenth among the select 22 credited with populations of more than one million. At the head of the list are four great capitals: London, 7,476,168: New York, 6,103,354; Berlin, 4.000,000, and Paris 3,000,000. Though far the youngest of the four. New York is still an old city according to New Zealand standards. New Amsterdam, from which it sprang, was founded by the Dutch in 1621, when James I. was on the throne of England. Now it and Chicago, 2,701,705, have the most motley populations of any city in the world. Five, times as big as Auckland. Sydney is 52 years older. Auckland was founded in IS4O. and has accumulated its 210,000 people in 88 years. The only Australian cities which greatly exceed it in size are Sydney and Melbourne. Adelaide is as much ahead of Auckland as Auckland is of Wellington. Brisbane, which had 202,000 people at the last census, is about the same size as Auckland, or perhaps a little larger on more recent estimates. Auckland is bigger than Perth, the capital of West Australia, and four times the size of Hobart. HOLDING ITS OWN Compared with the large cities of the Union of South Africa, toward which this country is now directing much attention, Auckland more than holds its own. Johannesburg has a population (natives excluded) of 170,741; Capetown, 130,565; Durban, 70,883. In Canada Auckland would be the third city, led only by Montreal and Toronto, and ahead of Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec and Vancouver. Wellknown American cities of Auckland’s size are Omaha, Atlanta, Akron, Oakland, Providence and St. Paul. Leicester, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Nottingham are English cities about in the same class, and in France Auckland would be fifth, after Paris, Marseilles, Lyons and Bordeaux. Valparaiso (Chile), Batavia (Java), Tashkent (Russian Asia), Gothenburg (Sweden) and Valencia, famed in song, are other cities of Auckland’s size. Such is their prestige that Aucklanders, regarding it. must view themselves as citizens of no mean city.