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File under: maps, demographics, Wellington

The first provisional results from this year's census have just been released. There's not much available yet, just census-night counts of population and occupied dwellings down to area unit level, but it's enough to have a look at growth patterns over the last 5 years. Here's a dot-density map for population growth in Wellington City (click for a larger version), where every red dot indicates 5 new people since 2001, and every blue dot representing a population decline of 5 people:

It's not surprising to see that most of the growth has been in inner-city Wellington. The raw numbers show that there are now nearly 4000 more people living in Lambton and Te Aro, an increase of over 40%. If you include Thorndon, Aro Valley, Mt Cook, Mt Victoria and Oriental Bay, central Wellington now has over 6,500 new residents.

The other growth area is in the northern suburbs, with over 3000 extra people. Unsurprisingly, most of this is in new subdivisions like Churton Park and Greenacres, and unlike the new inner-city dwellers, it's a fair bet that most of these people will be driving to work.

A few area units lost population, including Berhampore and Awarua (the hills northwest of Ngaio). The decrease is not large (1.5% and 3.3% respectively), so it may be an anomaly that will be corrected when the final counts are released, and it's otherwise hard to explain given that they are surrounded by areas of moderate growth. Looking at the occupied dwellings figures, however, shows that Berhampore actually has 5% more dwellings than 5 years ago: perhaps this is a sign of reduced household sizes due to gentrification.