Strategy, monitoring and research team leader Cameron Wood said at a meeting this week this could come from census data.
It could provide a better understanding of where people were coming from and how long they were staying, he said.
Migration is viewed as a crucial component in Dunedin’s population growth, but levels have been unpredictable in recent years through Covid-19 and afterwards.
An immigration surge nationally seemed to have been followed by a sharp drop and migrants were struggling to secure work, several bank economists have said.
Mr Wood said that there was a lot of uncertainty with population projections.
The Dunedin City Council has started preparing its draft 2025-34 long-term plan and it has assumed a high-growth scenario out to 2034 and then medium growth for the following 20 years.
Cr Christine Garey said central government immigration settings were hurting Dunedin.
She had concerns about how this was affecting international education, nurses and families in need of humanitarian solutions.
Lack of a government immigration office in Dunedin since 2013 was also unhelpful, she said.
Cr Jim O’Malley said the absence of a service based in the city was insulting.
Looking ahead to the nine-year plan, he warned against allowing pessimism about the city’s growth prospects to hold sway.
Cr O’Malley suggested inadequate investment in the past had seemed to correlate with lack of growth.
