Census 2011 - Waterford

merlante

Waterford city & suburbs - 51,519 pop (+4.7%)

Waterford is still the fifth largest city and is the third fastest growing city after Dublin and Galway.

Other cities:
Dublin - 1,110,627 (+6.2%)
Cork - 198,582 (+4.3%)
Limerick - 91,454 (+0.2%)
Galway - 76,778 (+5.6%)

Green Hornet

Population wise it's hard to see how it's a city. Didn't realise how much smaller than Limerick and Galway that it was.

mike65

A city is a legal definition, not a population one - See St Davids

merlante

Green Hornet wrote: »

Population wise it's hard to see how it's a city. Didn't realise how much smaller than Limerick and Galway that it was.

Well 15 years ago, Galway was about the size Waterford is now. 15 years before that, they both the same size, just under 40,000. Interesting that you draw the line after Galway, others draw it after Dublin or Cork. The law says it's the the cities listed, and they are all regional capitals anyway, and naturally ports and commercial hubs.

In any case, Waterford is growing quickly. A lot of the growth in Cork, Limerick and Galway over the years has been due to the universities in those cities. Perhaps Waterford will catch up somewhat if and when the WIT is upgraded. Waterford could expect to see student numbers ultimately rise by maybe 7,000 within 10 years, which would make a big difference to the population, and of course, many graduates remain in town. It looks like Limerick is in a bad way and is barely growing at all at the moment.

AdMMM

Lets not forget that our city is expanding into Kilkenny.

wellboytoo

I presume Tramore is not in these Figures?, so add 10+ k people to the above figures, wheras salthill is included in the Galway figures.

galwayrush

wellboytoo wrote: »

I presume Tramore is not in these Figures?, so add 10+ k people to the above figures, wheras salthill is included in the Galway figures.

Tramore (being about 8 miles away) is not in Waterford City.

letsbet

wellboytoo wrote: »

I presume Tramore is not in these Figures?, so add 10+ k people to the above figures, wheras salthill is included in the Galway figures.

That's probably because Salthill is closer to Galway City centre than most of the houses on the Dunmore Road are to Waterford city centre. Why would Tramore be included and if you did you'd have to include similar places in other cities.

mike65

Because Waterford deserves to have its population boosted by any means possible!

wellboytoo

That point is Tramore is a dormitory town of Waterford and has been for fifteen or twenty years , all the growth in tramore is not represented in the City figures, it was not a slag at Galway or otherwise.

merlante

letsbet wrote: »

That's probably because Salthill is closer to Galway City centre than most of the houses on the Dunmore Road are to Waterford city centre. Why would Tramore be included and if you did you'd have to include similar places in other cities.

Actually, a better comparison is with Barna, which is only connected to Galway by ribbon development but is included in the city's population. It would be unfortunate if Waterford were to suffer is some way just because it didn't develop 'cynically' in the direction of Tramore, rather than Dunmore, south Kilkenny or Gracedieu.

Because of the fact that there has always been a corridor of marshland extending from the historical 'pill' (now drained into John's river) out the Manor towards the Tramore rd. and outwards from there, this part of the city has historically been the slowest to develop. Only in the 18th century was the water-logged area drained to build the Mall and what would be the People's park. More significantly, only in the early 1990's was the land from the McDonald's (1993 iirc.) towards the inner ring road developed. The inner ring road was actually a ring road out in the country, despite plenty of development in the east and west of the city, because the marshland had to be contended with. Today, the marsh land still exists beyond Superquinn and I believe much of it is protected and will be turned into some kind of amenity. With Tramore growing to 10,000 people in its own right, there is also a compelling argument for restricting developments which exit on to the Tramore rd., in order to maintain a free flow of traffic between the city and Tramore, which you would have between any two such centres elsewhere.

In any case, Tramore cannot be viewed in isolation, outside of the context of the development of Waterford city. The pace of its growth is that of a dormitory centre, just like Cobh outside Cork or various towns outside Dublin. Tramore has been growing at 15-25% ever 5 years. Pretty much the only centre that has come close to this level of growth that *isn't* a dormitory town is Galway, otherwise, it simply does not happen. Prior to this rapid growth, Tramore was the same size as Dunmore East, or a bit bigger. Another reason why Tramore must be viewed in connection with Waterford city, is that fact that the town is now 20% of the size of Waterford, which means that not only has it grown due to its proximity to Waterford, but Waterford has very likely grown less quickly because people have moved to Tramore, and effectively see no problem living in Tramore rather than, say, the Dunmore rd or Ferrybank.

There is therefore a strong argument for adding Tramore to Waterford city (council), and, in the context of the effective population of Waterford, to add Tramore to the population when considering infrastructure and services, etc. I would hate to think that just because a portion of the population is separated from the city by 6-8 miles, that Waterford would lose out on critical funding or infrastructure.

The argument can be made that if you were to include Tramore into Waterford's population that the same could be done for other centres. But this is in fact already the case. Dublin and Cork frequently quote 'greater' population figures that include all sorts of places. The only difference is that those cities are usually far larger than their dormitory towns. In the case of Limerick and Galway, there are actually no relatively large towns in the same close proximity to those cities. Therefore, Waterford is pretty much unique in having a large dormitory town just outside the city.

There is a German example of the same sort of thing, where Bremen and Bremerhaven (the city and the port) are separated (by a good 30-40km) but share the same administration. Waterford-Tramore are a lot smaller but they are also a lot closer together. Interestingly, from centre to centre, it is exactly the same distance from Dublin city to Dun Laoghaire as it is from Waterford to Tramore.

fricatus

Yeah, that's the point really... whether or not Waterford city should actually administer Tramore is one thing, but the fact is that the two do function as city and suburb, regardless of the distance between them.

For example there are smaller towns with their own IDA business parks - and even hospitals - up and down the country. Tramore has none of this as it depends on the city pretty much for services like these. Therefore it's only right that its population is counted with the city when it comes to stuff like the IDA's efforts for Waterford, or funding for the hospital.

O Riain

how would the people of tramore feel about becoming part of the city? Seems like they get a raw deal from the county council/their own councilllors. The place is a gold mine and its potential is not being fulfilled as is.

Psychedelic

O Riain wrote: »

how would the people of tramore feel about becoming part of the city? Seems like they get a raw deal from the county council/their own councilllors. The place is a gold mine and its potential is not being fulfilled as is.

As a Tramore person I would welcome any amalgamtion into the City's local government/administration.

Waterford City Council is so much better than the Co. Council who can only ever say "we don't have the money" to the town's requests. They can't (won't) even allocate money for proper beach cleaning even though the beach is arguably the biggest amenity in the county. And now they are in massive debt (€10m I hear) compared to the City which seems to be run efficiently, great work being done despite the recession, the staff are excellent, they get things done whereas the Co. Council announces a plan to do something (like build the town park) and years later still nothing done.

doublejj

from the tramore road round a bout on new ring road,is at best 5 to 6 kms to sommerville roundabout....

fuzzy dunlop

galwayrush wrote: »

Tramore (being about 8 miles away) is not in Waterford City.

Incorrect there is about 4 miles between the two urban centres which have a strong urban density unlike Galway. If we copied Galways perversion of Urban sprawl the two urban areas would be amalgamated along with several villages in South Kilkenny with a similar population as the Western capital.Not to mention another region showering in their own ****.

merlante

Some really cool graphics and statistics just released by the CSO from census 2011.

merlante

Also, the last word on city/town populations:

Of Waterford interest:
Waterford city: 51,519 +4.7%
Tramore: 10,328 +7.2%
Dungarvan: 9,427 +12.7% (outgrowing Tramore for the first time in years)

Selected neighbours:
Kilkenny: 24,423 +10.1%
Carlow: 23,030 +11.1%
Wexford: 20,072 +10.5%
Clonmel: 17,908 +5.3%
New Ross: 8,151 +5.7%
Carrick-On-Suir: 5,931 +0.4%

THall04

wmpdd3

Surprised carlow is now smaller then kilkenny