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The National Growth Areas Alliance (NGAA) is the peak body for local governments in Australia’s fast-growing outer metropolitan regions. These regions represent more than 5.8 million people or one in five Australian residents, forming the nation’s newest communities.
The NGAA advocates to the Federal and State governments for improved policies and equitable funding to support growth area councils, to create resilient, liveable and thriving places and communities.
Currently, growth areas represented by the Alliance have been identified by their Local Government Areas (LGAs) via – self-selection as members of the Alliance, and by the application of flexible, combined criteria based on their location, typology, historic and assumed future growth. These criteria comprise:
There are 29 LGAs classified as “National Growth Areas(NGA)” by the NGAA’s application of their definition, situated across Australia’s five largest capital cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. These 29 LGAs make up 5% of Australia’s LGAs but have experienced 30%of Australia’s population growth in the past five years. They have been identified to meet more than a third of planned housing targets under the National Housing Accord in the next five years, nearly 400,000 dwellings, without commensurate investment in the infrastructure to adequately support the rate of residential development.
In 2024 the NGAA commissioned the RMIT’s Australian Urban Observatory, which publishes a set of liveability indicators in major cities, to analyse the variations in accessibility to key transport and social infrastructure in Australia’s five largest capital cities. This analysis highlighted the significant differences between growth areas councils and non-growth areas in cities in the distribution of access to a range of physical and social infrastructure and services related to health and wellbeing.
Based on this analysis the NGAA has been advocating for the federal government to recognise outer metropolitan growth areas as regions requiring specific attention to address existing infrastructure deficits and prioritise policy and infrastructure funding programs to match the rate of development in growth areas.
To recognise growth areas in policy, government agencies require a nationally consistent classification for these regions. This project aims to address this need by developing and trialling a geographical classification for sub-metropolitan regions, that can reliably identify growth areas LGAs.
The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) is a classification of Australia into a hierarchy of statistical areas. The Australian Burea of Statistics (ABS) publishes the statistical geography that allows users to understand, compare and analyse statistical data for informed decision-making about all sorts of places from cities and suburbs to regional or Local Government areas.
Under the current ASGS structure there is no distinction between LGAs within Greater Capital City Statistical Areas within the main structure. Nor is there any classification of sub-regions within the Urban Structure geographies. The remoteness structure similarly classifies major cities as a singular geography.
In contrast, the Remoteness Structure include four classifications for regional areas based on the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA+), the widely recognised Australian indicator of remoteness. The ARIA+ does not differentiate accessibility for metropolitan regions within its defined ‘major cities’. Yet there are considerable social, economic and environmental differences that exist in regions within major cities can be distinguished geographically. The University of Adelaide produces and updates the ARIA+ geographies for the ABS.
The lack of a definitive and transparent methodology to distinguish growth areas within either the ASGS remoteness structure major cities’, Greater Capital Cities Statistical Areas or under the urban structure, limits the recognition of NGAs in state and federal government policy and programs, contributing to spatial inequities that impact their communities.
The Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR) is a collaboration of researchers, policy stakeholders, industry, and advocacy. Based at the University of Adelaide, the Centre aims to:
ACHR research combines the methods and approaches of geography, spatial science, econometrics, architecture, building science, social epidemiology, and planning to address urban problems through collaboration with professional practitioners and policymakers. Much of this work aims to contribute evidence that may be implemented by governments at local, state, and national levels.
In addition to commissioned research and analysis, the Centre’s research activities are supported by competitive funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Health and Medical Research Foundation (NHMRC), and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute(AHURI).
Core research themes include:
The NGAA is collaborating with the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR), to develop and trial a geographical classification for national growth areas.
The initial aim of this research is to propose a revised, transparent, and repeatable classification of NGAs for Australia (“NGA25”).This classification would be based on robust, repeatable ABS data, available at the key spatial scales in alignment with Australian Statistical Geography Standard(ASGS) structures.
It is intended that the development of NGA25 will assist in service planning, demographic analysis and resource allocation, and support local governments when making evidence-based funding cases for urban and regional initiatives.
The project commenced in October 2025.
The Discussion Paper was released on 26 November 2025.
The NGAA recognises that growth and change is occurring across many LGAs. It also recognises that there is considerable diversity among Growth LGAs in the outer periphery of capital cities. However, in developing an NGA25 classification, we are seeking consistency in the classification of growth areas LGAs across Australia, to more easily identify growth area councils as distinct metropolitan sub-regions.
The goal is for the classification of NGA25 to be adopted and applied across government programs to improve planning and resource allocation that is better tailored to the needs of growth area communities.
NGAA is seeking feedback and support from members and stakeholders in response to the questions posed in the Discussion Paper to inform further refinement of the methodology and application of the NGA25 classification.
The NGAA welcomes questions, comments and suggestions, via email: info@ngaa.org.au to be received by 27 February 2026.
Your feedback will inform further development and trialling of the NGA25 classification in 2026.
