Inner Melbourne projected to outstrip Sydney on jobs and population

 EXCLUSIVE: INNER Melbourne will become the nation's biggest job centre with the city on track to overtake Sydney's population, says the Napthine Government in a new urban planning blueprint.

The strategic report projected the City of Melbourne is set to have more than 700,000 jobs by 2036 - up from about 450,000 now.

On current trends, Melbourne's population would surpass Sydney's around that time and reach eight million by 2049, almost double today's figure.

Planning Minister Matthew Guy said that beating Sydney wasn't a target, but an inevitability based on Australian Bureau of Statistics projections.

"We are being told that Melbourne's population will become the largest in Australia, so in that case, the Government needs to plan to have a more sustainable city, a city which has enough jobs and more jobs for future generations," Mr Guy said.He said that growing jobs in the inner city was a key plank of the Plan Melbourne strategy, which set out the city's development over the next 40 years.

"We are very confident that we will achieve this jobs target, in fact we are more likely to achieve this jobs target than we are to become the largest city in Australia.

"The key to a productive and competitive Melbourne is a reduction in the costs and time that the worker faces to travel to work. That is why the Government is unlocking residential and mixed use development opportunities in and around the CBD of Melbourne."

But Dr Bob Birrell, from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research, said that less than 10 per cent of the inner city's workforce actually lived in the area.

Dr Birrell's research also revealed that three times as many apartments as offices will be built in central Melbourne over the next few years.

"They are well on the way to crowding out space for offices which would be needed if all these extra jobs came to pass. These job estimates are fanciful," he said.

Mr Guy said that Plan Melbourne, due to be released this week, foresaw a phasing out of massive growth in the outer suburbs over the next 20 years and more focus on regional Victoria.

"We don't want Victoria to become a city-state, we want Melbourne to grow but we also want regional Victoria to share in that growth."

Plan Melbourne will replace the former Labor government's Melbourne 2030 strategy.