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New South Wales, ACT and Jervis Bay Territory |
The Sydney metropolitan area has 3.828 million residents1 and is the capital of New South Wales, Australia. The city centers on a drowned river called Port Jackson and extends south beyond a similar inlet called Botany Bay. Its Opera House is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the city is a popular tourist destination. Sydney is an important grain and coal port, and has one of the nation's busiest airports.
The tallest building is Citigroup Centre, a 50 story office tower. Having the same number of stories, but shorter, is MLC Centre, the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world when it was first constructed. The geometry of the 41 story Aurora Place avoids parallel lines, and the building's outer curves are intended to echo those of the Opera House. Another landmark is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the world's largest (but not the longest) steel arch bridge, nicknamed the 'Coathanger.'2
Year | Population | Political entity |
1900 CE | 478,0003 | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |
2000 CE | 4,086,0004 | Australia |
Sydney Opera House
1. Calculation for 2013 in world-gazetteer.com, accessed 4/20/2013.
2. Information about buildings and the bridge comes from Emporis.com, accessed 5/4/2013.
3. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of World's Largest Cities". From 1900 to the present Sydney has been the largest city in New South Wales.
4. Official estimate from world-gazetteer.com, accessed 4/20/2013.