Planning Melbourne: Lessons for a Sustainable City

Preface

Many fine books have been written about Melbourne. The city’s history has been comprehensively explored from early settlement through times of excess and collapse. The city’s institutions have been described and analysed, particularly the history and operation of the Melbourne City Council, state governments and bodies such as the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. There is a vast body of material that analyses various sectors such as the economy, and personal reflections on the city have also appeared.

Strangely, few books have investigated the operation of Melbourne’s system of spatial planning, the institutions which have managed this system and its application across a range of economic, social and environmental sectors. Spatial planning refers to the policies and regulations governing the use and development of land. A few books have investigated this system in the past, notably Brian McLoughlin’s Shaping Melbourne’s Future (published in 1992) which analysed the 1987 metropolitan strategy and its policy context, and Miles Lewis’s 1999 book Suburban Backlash, which placed disputes over urban consolidation in a historical and institutional context. Others have examined spatial policies and institutions related to particular locations, such as Kim Dovey’s 2005 Fluid City, which focused on the story of Melbourne’s Docklands development.

This book intends to fill a gap in the study of Melbourne’s planning system. It draws from historical sources and analyses strategic policies from the first Melbourne plan to help critique a range of contemporary issues facing Melbourne. Its subject is the spatial planning system, with a particular focus on strategic land-use planning and the supporting regulatory system. A wide range of complex environmental, economic and social challenges underpin this study of Melbourne and these warrant further examination.

This book seeks to do more than simply describe or document the current state of planning. Through an examination of specific planning issues, it exposes the urgent need for stronger and more coherent planning and for much-needed investment in urban infrastructure. It calls for a radical change of priorities and for a strengthening of political resolve. Above all, it seeks to restore purpose and conviction to planning for Melbourne, in order to preserve and enhance what is valuable and unique about this city, and to enable the city to adapt to the challenges facing us in the 21st century.

Michael Buxton, Robin Goodman, Susie Moloney

Chapter 1

City growth, sustainability and planning

Introduction

This is a critical period in Melbourne’s history. Melbourne is experiencing rapid growth. It had the fastest-growing population of any Australian capital city for more than a decade, with more than a million new residents added to Melbourne since the start of the millennium. The growth predictions indicate that a city of 4.35 million people in 2014 will become one of 8 million people by 2050 (ABS 2014a). This growth is fuelling a rapid rate of development in low-density suburbs on the city fringe and in high-rise apartment towers in the city centre. This model of development, coupled with resource depletion, climate change and a growing socio-economic divide between inner and outer Melbourne, presents significant challenges to government planners and urban policy-makers. Melbourne is a very different city from the one of 1.5 million that existed in 1954 when the first Melbourne strategic plan was released. Yet, over many decades and despite escalating social and environmental pressures, the willingness and capacity of governments to deal with these challenges has diminished – to the detriment of current and future generations.

Melbourne’s increase in population to 2050 will mean the need to provide at least another 1.6 million homes. How this demand will be met, and the pressures that satisfying it will place on the amenity, functioning, productive capacity and social cohesion of the city, are key issues confronting the city today. Melbourne is expanding extensively outward while also growing upward through vast new high-rise developments in the inner and, to some extent, middle-ring suburbs. At the same time, medium-density development continues in earnest in the middle and established outer suburbs. Melbourne’s metropolitan area has quadrupled in size over the last 40 years to cover almost 10 000 km² – one of the lowest densities in the world – as though governments believed that suburbs could expand indefinitely. In the decade to 2012, some 60% of the more than 600 000 new residents settled in the new outer urban growth corridors. Over 82 000 building permits were issued between 2003 and 2011 in just three growth areas, Wyndham, Melton and Hume. At the same time, urban intensification has reached levels that few people foresaw in the mid 1990s. Many people predicted that Melburnians would never embrace a culture of apartment living. However, by 2014, the population growth in the central city municipality of Melbourne was the highest of all of Melbourne’s municipalities, exceeding growth in any outer urban council area. There has been dramatic growth in the number of residents in the City of Melbourne, and the CBD, Docklands and Southbank in particular. Much of this new growth is in high- and medium-rise apartments. More than 62 800 dwellings were approved in the municipality of Melbourne between 2004 and 2013, and they were mainly apartments. Over 100 high-rise developments have been approved recently in and on the fringe of the central city, about the same as for the City of London.

This places Melbourne at the forefront of international high-rise development. Inner urban development is placing great strain on many services. Finding childcare and school places are particular problems facing the rapidly increasing inner population. Yet, in the 1990s, the state government sold many school sites and other government land holdings, and developed select localities such as Docklands without schools and other community facilities. Such short-term decision-making and apparent lack of planning has undermined the capacity of inner urban areas to adequately provide many services to new or existing residents. The public transport infrastructure that served the city well for more than a century no longer suffices; it needs expansion, but the priority given to freeway expansion may well delay or prevent this. A radical paradigm shift is needed towards better public transport provision across the entire city and away from the ever-increasing, insatiable needs of road traffic.

The type of urban growth we are seeing in Melbourne is creating serious and increasing structural problems. A growing consensus from big city advocates, new urbanists and ecological city proponents is that outer urban low-density sprawl creates significant social and ecological problems. The current phase of high-rise construction may well prove equally problematic in the 21st century. A Melbourne City Council draft housing strategy (MCC 2014) shows that apartments in Melbourne’s high-rise towers are shrinking in size. Recent apartment blocks are up to 10 times as dense as those permitted by law in some of the world’s most urbanised centres, and 55% of the city’s tallest apartment buildings contain features such as windowless bedrooms. These structures will leave a lasting legacy of poor-quality housing due to the current lack of enforceable density and height controls. They will serve their occupants poorly in a century dominated by rising temperatures, high energy prices and a shift away from traditional fuels. Better internal design alone is not the only solution. High-rise towers are the most inefficient users of energy and can create vertical gated communities of people living isolated from the public realm and each other, contributing to social and physical divisions. The twin pillars of poorly serviced outer urban sprawl and inner-city high-rise dominate Melbourne’s development, in the absence of a clear long-term vision for the future sustainability of the city.

There have been other critical periods in planning for Melbourne, most notably the aftermath of the land boom era of the early 1880s, the abandonment of the 1929 plan because of the Great Depression and World War II, and the mixed fortunes of the post-war 1954 and 1971 plans. Governments were able to counter failures in city planning through incremental improvements. The urban population and area had not exceeded the capacity of the city to function effectively. However, from the early 1990s, the city entered a new era when economic growth became the central goal of urban development. This was the time when governments needed to anticipate the implications of a future radically different from the past. Population growth from the mid 1990s began to exceed the capacity of the city’s infrastructure and services to function effectively. Melbourne is moving quickly into a new condition characterised by rapid dysfunction replacing orderly linear change, because of unpredicted complex interactions between social, economic and environmental elements in the urban system. These elements are interconnected: urban sprawl into poorly serviced areas lacking jobs increases dissatisfaction and crime; failure to invest in massive new public transport services causes road gridlock, increasing the costs and frustration from congestion; replacing the city’s heritage buildings with high-rise construction destroys one of Melbourne’s greatest assets, increases citizen alienation and locates large numbers of people in areas without adequate services. Most of these problems arise from growth. The problems arising in a city of 8 million people are not double those of a city of 4 million – they are radically different in scale and type. By the mid 1990s, the impacts of climate change and diminishing fossil fuels were also requiring a reconsideration about city growth and the way cities were planned. Instead, the Victorian government embraced the neoliberal doctrine of reducing the role of government and public spending, and showed little interest in steering society towards the achievement of goals in the public good. This led to a transfer of many government responsibilities to the private sector and the operation of markets, and a rejection of the need for long-term strategic planning. Governments have subsequently failed to plan for future needs at a time when this is most needed.

Melbourne cannot grow in any form without placing more pressure on vital ecological systems. If Melbourne is to prosper and be sustainable, this growth has to be planned under a revitalised planning and governance system. The most critical objective must be to protect Melbourne’s amenity. Amenity is not just a culture of tolerance, respect and diversity. It includes the physical services that allow the city to function effectively, such as high-quality and accessible public transport, health and education systems. Amenity is also defined by the quality and appearance of the city, its parks, biodiversity and historic buildings. Melbourne was once one of the grand Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco cities but this history, which provides so much of our identity, helping define who we are, is being demolished at an astonishing rate. High amenity has wide-ranging economic benefits and, when connected to effective urban functioning, production and equity, is a vital component of liveability. Without it, Melbourne is unexceptional.

This is the challenge facing the citizens and governments of Melbourne: how are the city’s strengths to be enhanced and its functioning improved for the betterment of its population? This book examines the adequacy of government responses to this challenge and the capacity of government to anticipate and plan for change. We need to move beyond short-term electoral cycles and embrace long-term planning which ensures that decisions made today lead us towards rather than away from a sustainable future. Public concern is growing about the failure of politicians to develop effective policies to prepare for radical change. This book is intended to contribute to the debate that must occur if Melbourne is to prosper and grow to the benefit of all citizens, not just a powerful few.

Why study Melbourne?

This is a book about Melbourne’s development and planning, which tells a story about broad trends in Australian and international urbanisation and the changing role of governments in shaping cities. Despite the nostalgic rural mythology which has figured prominently in the Australian national story, cities have shaped and dominated the nation’s progress. They have absorbed most of the national investment in infrastructure for more than a century and provide the focus for creative, inventive and entrepreneurial thinking and action. They are the sites for most of the nation’s industry and employment. Large swathes of Australia’s rural areas exist to service the major cities, providing the food, water, energy, tourism and other services needed to sustain city-dwellers. Australia’s cities are under-researched and they can provide rich and rewarding ground for urban studies. Melbourne does not fit into European, US or Asian prototypes. If the outer suburbs are exemplars of the world’s most extensive urban sprawl, there is no sign of the inner urban abandonment that has come to characterise many US cities. Flight from Melbourne’s inner and middle suburbs was a phenomenon of the immediate post-war era but the influx of new migrants, along with strong effective planning and gentrification, reversed the population decline. The central business district maintains its pre-eminent status. The inner suburbs are as densely populated as those in many European cities and these populations continue to grow. The amenity of inner- and middle-ring suburbs is high, with large areas of 19th-century and pre-war housing, functional main streets and community facilities, public transport and parks and easy access to professional employment and jobs in advanced business services.

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Planning Melbourne: Lessons for a Sustainable City reflects on planning since the post-war era, but focuses in particular on the past two decades and the ways that key government policies and influential individuals and groups have shaped the city during this time. The book does not aim to present a comprehensive history of planning in Melbourne. Rather, it examines past debates and policies; the choices planners have faced; the mistakes and sound decisions that have been made; recent trends and current issues; and how Melbourne can survive and prosper in a century of radical change.

If planning is to shape a more sustainable city, that is, one that will survive and function effectively while minimising resource use and waste, it must anticipate problems common to modern cities and those that are particular to Melbourne’s distinctive history and institutional development. Managing urban growth sustainably and effectively is a central concern for urban planning but the capacity for urban planning to drive change has been undermined, leading to growing inequality, loss of identity, service dysfunction and loss of natural resources. With each new state government, years are invested reinventing and developing policies with stated goals of managing growth and improving the city’s sustainability, yet these goals remain largely aspirational within a system that continues to prioritise market-led development over long-term investment and planning. This book is a call for stronger and more visionary leadership and action, for government to tackle the breadth of issues confronting our city. Telling the story of urban planning and change in Melbourne can also help us understand the role of both state and market in shaping and influencing public agendas, and how the pursuit of economic goals has diminished the importance of other urban policy objectives. Telling that story is the goal of this book.

Population growth pressures

At the end of 2013, Victoria reached a population of 5 791 000 people (ABS 2014a). Melbourne is home to nearly three-quarters of the state’s population, while 1.5 million people live in regional Victoria. Between 2006 and 2011 Melbourne’s population grew on average 1.9% each year, or 82.5% of the state’s total. The remaining population growth was mostly in Victoria’s 10 regional towns (some 10%), with 7.6% in other regional areas. In 2011, 23.4% of Melbourne’s households consisted of one person, 32% of two people and 44.7% of three or more. At this level, the statistics suggest that couple-only households are increasing at a faster rate than either family households with children or lone-person households – 2.3% per annum compared with 1.8% and 1.6% respectively (DPCD 2012b).

In the 14 years from 2000, Melbourne’s population rose by over a million people, almost one-third. ‘No city in Australia has ever added so many people so quickly’ (Colebatch 2014). Almost 2000 people a week come to Melbourne to live. Victorian employment since 2010 has increased at a much lower rate than its population, with only 90 000 more jobs compared to a population increase of 320 000 adults. Only 12 000 of these jobs are full-time. Manufacturing has been most affected. Infrastructure improvements and government spending are not keeping pace with this population increase, in part because the government refuses to borrow the substantial sums needed to allow Melbourne to function effectively in the future.

Inner Melbourne experienced significant growth after 2000, of 2.5% per year from 2006 to 2011. Inner Melbourne’s age profile is distinctive: some 44% of its people are adults aged 18–34, compared to the metropolitan area with 25.7%, and Victoria with 23.8% (ABS 2011). The central business district (CBD), Docklands and Southbank provide 14% of Melbourne’s jobs, with significant levels of growth in property and business services, professional services and the financial sectors. In 2001, the City of Melbourne contributed 22% of Melbourne’s total economic output; this increased to 29% in 2012 (DTPLI 2014a).

While Melbourne is growing upward in inner-city areas, it continues its relentless outward spread. Between the 2006 and 2011 national censuses of population and housing, half of Melbourne’s growth (of 183 726 people) occurred in the outer suburbs or formally designated ‘growth areas’ including the cities of Casey, Whittlesea and Wyndham, Cardinia, Hume and Melton. The average annual population increase of the growth area municipalities was 4.6%, over twice the metropolitan-wide rate of 1.9%. In 2006, the growth area councils housed one in five of metropolitan Melbourne’s population; by 2011, 23%. Children made up a significant proportion of the population in growth areas at 27%, compared to 22% in the rest of Melbourne and 11% in the inner city.

Sound growth projections for the state and city over the coming decades are essential in order to plan effectively for Melbourne’s growth. Victoria’s population is expected to reach 7.7 million by 2031 and 10 million by 2051, while Melbourne is expected to double its population to 8 million people by 2050 and to overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city by 2053 (ABS 2014b; DTPLI 2014b). Overseas migration is expected to be the largest single cause of population change in Victoria, although natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) will also be significant. Melbourne can be expected to take most of Victoria’s overseas migrants and to experience high levels of natural increase, accommodating around three-quarters of the state’s population by 2051. Regional Victoria will gain residents from Melbourne, and this internal migration will be the main contributor to change in regional Victoria’s population.

Victoria’s age profile will be different in 2051. The median age of the population is expected to increase from 37 years in 2011 to 41 years. The proportion of the population aged 65 years and older is projected to increase from 14% to 21%. The number of Victorians aged 85 years and older is expected to almost quadruple to over 400 000 by 2051, the greatest change for any age group. The rate of change in the number of households in Victoria is expected to exceed that of the population at large as the average household size gradually decreases over the period; as the population ages, there is expected to be a lower proportion of families with children and a higher proportion of one-person and two-person households.

These trends and projections suggest several pressing questions that need to be addressed. What are the implications for the provision of future housing, transport, employment and services for 8 million people spread across a vast area? Can a city of this size continue to function effectively and, if so, what needs to be done now to ensure that Melbourne remains liveable? What role should governments play to ensure that effective planning is in place for a high quality of life for future generations and, in particular, what is the role of land-use planning in this process? But before we consider the importance of planning for Melbourne’s future, we first reflect on what makes Melbourne ‘the world’s most liveable city’ and for whom.

Is Melbourne the world’s most liveable city?

In 2014, The Economist Intelligence Unit once again ranked Melbourne ahead of 139 other cities as the ‘world’s most liveable city’. ‘Liveability’, a slippery term, has become the gold star for cities. The Economist uses 30 criteria to assess a city’s performance across the five areas of stability, infrastructure, education, health care, culture and the environment, to provide a score that measures social functioning, environmental quality and economic competitiveness. The measured variables include crime rates, climate, private schooling, parks, health care, housing and transport services. The resultant global liveability league table is elitist, defining liveability from the perspective of a group of footloose or globally mobile business executives and knowledge industry workers. Richard Florida (2004) labels this group the ‘creative class’ and considers them crucial to a city’s success. The corporate world and city governments compete for this elite group as the agents of the scientific, legal, real estate, financial, cultural, higher education and high technology industries that fuel advanced capitalism (Sassen 1991). They bring expertise, experience and innovation to a range of creative, cultural and knowledge-based enterprises. They also bring prestige and large discretionary incomes to the cities in which they choose to live. As one commentator on The Economist’s criteria for liveability put it, ‘the rankings reflect an upper-middle-class view of the world that greatly values comforts and security but has no dimension of social responsibility, diversity, equity or sustainability’ (Nelson 2011). Although Melbourne again achieved ‘world’s most liveable city’ status, not everyone shares the benefits that this implies.

Following a 2012 review of Victoria’s planning system by the Council of Australian Governments’ Reform Council on Cities Committee, the Chairman, Brian Howe, noted that beyond the inner and middle-ring suburbs Melbourne’s liveability lessens significantly and that access to opportunities is diminished (ABC Radio National 2012). Liveability as defined in city marketing discourse is limited to a particular geography within the inner and middle-ring suburbs of Melbourne and is truly applicable only to those with access to all that the city can offer. In the race to become the world’s most liveable city, the day-to-day experiences and needs of those on lower incomes, often living in Melbourne’s car-dependent and under-serviced outer suburbs, are noticed less. As one resident from the outer-northern suburban area of Epping quoted in The Age observed, ‘Melbourne is liveable for people who can afford it or those who are lucky enough to grow up in an area that has all that transport … For people on the fringes who have taken out 95% mortgages, plus paying for petrol, it’s killing them’ (Dowling and Perkins 2012).

Other surveys using different criteria obtain different results. Mercer’s Quality of Living survey, for example, ranked Melbourne 17th in 2012. Since 2005, The Age has commissioned three ‘liveable Melbourne’ studies to provide a more spatially differentiated assessment in its ranking of liveability in Melbourne. It commissioned Tract Consultants and Deloitte Access Economics to rank all Melbourne’s 321 suburbs (see ‘Liveable Melbourne Study’, The Age Online 2011, 2015). Fifteen criteria were developed, encompassing topographic, infrastructure and cultural measures. The measures referenced proximity to the CBD and Port Phillip Bay, proximity to a train station and other transport, access to schools, traffic congestion, tree density and policing offences. ‘Hilliness’, too, was considered conducive to liveability. The study’s authors defined ‘liveability’ as ‘the general quality of a place which makes it pleasant or agreeable for people to reside in’ (The Age, 2011). In 2011, South Yarra in Melbourne’s inner south-east was ranked number one, while Hallam in Melbourne’s outer south-east was rated last (see Fig. 1.1). The most recent study in 2015 showed that South Yarra maintained its status in the top three most liveable suburbs in Melbourne. Skye was ranked lowest, due to its lack of services and infrastructure (Lucas 2015). The gradation from most to least liveable Melbourne suburbs aligns closely to a locale’s proximity to the central city, and access to public transport and other services.

Disadvantage is spatially located, that is, the services, access and opportunity in some locations are vastly superior to those in other areas. The physical and planning factors that worsen social disadvantage include inadequate infrastructure, services and social and cultural facilities, car-based suburbs, and a separation between uses that leads to reliance on cars for daily needs and for long commutes to educational facilities and jobs. These conditions affect residents who live in many outer urban areas, particularly ‘highly vulnerable’ young people facing ‘inadequate access to employment and education due to transport gaps’, as well as an expanding ageing population and culturally and linguistically diverse communities (Robson and Wiseman 2009: 9).

The expansion of the city, combined with low-density urban development and minimal investment in public transport and services, has been a recipe for serious disadvantage and vulnerability in outer Melbourne. A clear divide is emerging between an increasingly unaffordable inner region and an ever-expanding, car-dependent outer region. With this divide come distinct liveability issues in different parts of the city, as reflected in Fig. 1.1. Only governments actively engaged in improving urban planning for Melbourne at large can bring about the coordinated infrastructural development that forms the basis of a fairer, more sustainable and liveable city for all Melburnians.

Fig. 1.1.   The Age Index of Liveability map. Source: The Age Online, 24 November 2011.

What type of city do we want?

Official reports and their selective indicators of liveability, sustainability and productivity are useful in helping define the kinds of local places and wider city environments we may want. However, they remain indicators of success framed by people interested in benchmarking and comparing cities, and often are produced for marketing purposes. Building upon research for the Australian government by Auspoll, ‘My City: The People’s Verdict’, an industry-supported survey was undertaken in 2011, focusing on aspects of cities that Australian communities most value (Property Council of Australia 2011). Over 4000 people were approached across each of Australia’s seven capital cities. This survey considered the importance that residents place on particular attributes of a