Judging by recent articles in the Townsville Bulletin, Townsville appears obsessed with the idea it will grow to 1 million people from its current population of just under 200,000. The Townsville Bulletin reported yesterday (Townsville tipped to hit 1 million people):
WHAT would Townsville look like if there were a million people living in the city?
That’s what Townsville Enterprise hopes to find out through a concept design competition it is running to find the best ideas for ensuring the city retains its great lifestyle as it grows.
Townsville Enterprise deserves some credit for being so forward-looking and visionary, especially given current Queensland Government population projections only have Townsville growing to around 300,000-350,000 people over the next couple of decades (see the chart below with projections for low, medium and high population growth scenarios). If you (crudely) extrapolate from these projections, Townsville wouldn’t reach 1 million people until around 2081 at the earliest and most likely not until around 2101.
So Townsville Enterprise is being very visionary indeed. As well as thinking about the very long-term, I hope Townsville Enterprise is also focussing on the pressing need to promote business development in a city that is over-reliant on Government and defence jobs.
Queensland Economy Watch 
As a former Townsville girl, I would say that the city has always had delusions of grandeur.
Haha, thanks Jen.
Townsville is really quite delusional at the moment.
The collective ‘development’ community, particularly the government funded folk have made the primary mistake of believing their own rhetoric of the region having a balanced economy, can do culture and that their commodity exports would continue unabated. Sadly, none of this is true and the excessive dependence on government funding is being cruelly exposed. That is where we are but how to escape?
Instead of positioning for the future and trying to innovate around some very fundamental problems the captains of industry want… a SUPERSTADUIM!!! Another $300,000,000 of government debit injection to move a few football games from one end of town to another. So much real long-term productive industry and infrastructure could be acquired for this massive sum. But instead they want a rugby league inspired ‘turbo-charging’ of the region. Unfortunately for their mates in construction, they will get what they deserve. Nothing.
Think again Townsville. You can do a lot better.
Yes, it’s unfortunate the superstadium is seen as Townsville’s saviour. Thanks for the comment, Sad for the North.