Melbourne was founded nearly 50 years after Sydney and it remains a close second in size and reputation. Melbourne is also Sydney’s rival as a political, business and cultural center. Its population is projected to overtake Sydney at around 8 million by 2053 on current trends.
The Economist has voted Melbourne as the ‘world’s most liveable city’ for the last three years.
FOUNDATION OF THE CITY IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Melbourne was founded in 1835 when John Batman arrived by boat from Tasmania looking for pastoral land.
In 1837, Governor Bourke arrived and instructed the Assistant Surveyor General to architect Robert Hoddle to plan out the town.
The Hoddle Grid was an ambitious plan with 30-metre wide streets and a system of secondary mews or little streets running east-west at mid-block. This initial subdivision for a population of around 4000 people, beside the Yarra River has become Melbourne’s distinctive central business district.
Within 50 years of settlement, Melbourne exploded in population and wealth as a result of the Victorian gold rush to become, in the 1880s, the richest city in the world. This was reflected in its Victorian period buildings that equaled those of northern English industrial revolution cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.
GROWTH DURING THE 20TH CENTURY
Like many cities in the early 20th century, Melbourne grew by developing a network of rail and tramlines with the influence of car and road transport growing after the Second World War.
Other Australian cities abandoned their tram systems but Melbourne converted from cable trams to electric trams and has extended and upgraded its network to become the largest tram system of any city in the world.
Improvements have also been made to the rail network including a subway loop under the central city in the 1970s.
Melbourne has expanded substantially in size and population since the 1950s. This growth has mostly taken the form of low-density suburban development with detached houses on individual lots; the beloved ‘quarter-acre block’. A vast road and freeway network have been developed to support this suburban expansion of the city.
The current debate about Melbourne’s next period of growth focuses on how suburban expansion can be contained and whether the existing city can be successfully retrofitted to make more efficient use of existing infrastructure through increased density and more sustainable mixed-use development.
CENTRAL CITY REVITALIZATION
The City of Melbourne is a local government area that covers just 38-square kilometers of the central city. This council has had an urban design section for about 30 years, which has been influential in bringing about incremental change through strategic thinking and project facilitation.
Its work began in the 1980s with a report, ‘Grids and Greenery’, that characterized Melbourne’s inner-city structure and open space network and recommended measures to reinforce it.
A survey of city center street life and activity was initiated in the early 1980’s in collaboration with Jan Gehl. “Places for people 2004” is an update of this survey available on the City of Melbourne web site. It documents the substantial increase in central city life and activity through many strategic programmes and projects over the last 30 years.
The University of Melbourne and RMIT, as well as several other tertiary organizations, are located in central Melbourne. They bring students to the city including many foreign and local students who choose to live in the center.
RE-ALIGNING THE CITY WITH THE YARRA RIVER
During the 1980s it was realized that despite being founded on the river, the central city had effectively turned its back to it because large tracts of the river edge were developed for rail infrastructure and industry. State and city led projects have enabled the systematic recovery of the river edge for public access and recreation along both banks of the Yarra River.
SPORTING MELBOURNE
Melbourne hosted the Olympics in 1956 and the Commonwealth Games in 2006. The Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Melbourne Tennis Centre are two world-class facilities sitting within parkland just a short walk from the city center.
They form the nucleus of other facilities close to the center, which accommodate frequent major sporting events and festivals.
MELBOURNE DOCKLANDS
Relocation of port facilities and a bid for the 1996 Olympics provided the stimulus to consider a substantial expansion of Melbourne’s developed Hoddle Grid to the west.
The Docklands Authority was established in 1995 with the charter of delivering a new waterfront city extension led by private sector investment within ten large development precincts for sale to consortia.
The development of each precinct has been guided by a general Docklands master plan and each tenderer’s development proposal is subject to progressive design review at each development stage.
Melbourne Docklands occupies an area of 3-square kilometers and is now more than 50% complete and includes:
• A sports and entertainment stadium with a sliding roof
• Office buildings and IT facilities accommodating 38,000 employees
• High-density housing developments (4,800 dwellings) integrated with cafes, bars, conference centers, restaurants and shopping
• Movie studios.
Some of the east-west city grid streets have been extended over rail infrastructure, including extended tram routes, to help integrate Docklands with the established city center. The master plan requires generous public access to all water frontages.
While Docklands has attracted considerable investment in many high-quality buildings it is not greatly loved by the public because it lacks the cohesive vitality of an established city despite the attractions of the water setting. This is partly due to the strategy of incremental development of multiple precincts that are not yet well integrated or fully linked to the established city.
It still lacks a sense of community, with mostly affluent residents, few families and virtually no schools, crèches or other community facilities. The development pattern of tall and large buildings and podium car parks lacks the grain of successful cities, while the public spaces tend to be open and windswept with limited activation along their edges.
It is hoped and expected that the next decade of development will see Docklands become more diverse, active and better integrated with its setting. In retrospect it seems obvious that the private sector led development model and a weak master plan have contributed to its current deficiencies.
MELBOURNE’S BAY AND GREEN NETWORKS
Port Phillip Bay is a great, if under recognized, asset to the city for recreation and amenities. Unlike most other waterfront cities, almost the entire foreshore is accessible to the public being largely free from private ownership. The landscape character is predominantly natural, with continuous beaches dotted with public facilities including pathways, sailing clubs, cafes and lifesaving clubs. The bay is used year-round and it is especially popular during our warm summers.
Melbourne also has a magnificent group of historic parks and squares around the central city. With growth, more natural parks and sporting areas, often along streams and drainage ways, have been conserved and developed as open spaces. Future development should continue to provide pedestrian and cycle networks while also enhancing biodiversity and providing for recreation.
MELBOURNE’S VILLAGES
Greater Melbourne is a series of distinctive villages of varying urban character and social mix.
Middle and outer area shopping and local community precincts are evolving with the beginnings of mixed-use, high-density and various ethnic concentrations. Melbourne is a multi-cultural society with 180 ethnic communities and 233 languages.
The inner-city shopping areas are undergoing a renaissance of activity with cafes, bars and specialist shopping. Food and coffee culture are the focus where street life is supported by the increasing use of public transport, bikes and walking in favour of using a car. Each area reflects its unique character: European, Middle Eastern, Asian, haute couture, flea market bargains and avant-garde to retro. There’s something for all tastes, ages and income levels.
QUIRKY MELBOURNE
Central Melbourne was developed with a network of Victorian-period shopping arcades akin to those in Paris, London or Leeds. These have been extended in recent years as a system of active spaces by redeveloping service lanes into pedestrian routes lined by tiny shops, cafes and bars and decorated by graffiti artists. They have become a place to stroll and stage wedding and fashion photo shoots.
LIVABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Melbourne, especially its inner city, has come a long way as a vital and exciting place to live, work and play over the recent decades. We are blessed with a good climate, a rich heritage of parks, infrastructure and buildings. The bay and our river system provide open spaces for everyone. We are a safe, multi-cultural city and society with opportunities for education, culture, work and play. It is therefore no real surprise that we do well on the world city livability index. It should also be recognized that this high quality of life comes with an excessive per capita footprint, one of the highest of any city. This means we have a big challenge ahead: to retain livability while adjusting to a carbon constrained world.
Melbourne may have many valuable lessons for much more rapidly developing Indian cities. Our inner-city revitalization is worthy of emulation; however, our low-density, road-based suburban expansion is not a recommended model to follow in the 21st century.
Photographs: Bruce Echberg, City of Melbourne and Tourism Victoria
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