Victoria and the price of popularity

If nothing else, Melbourne’s booming suburban areas need to be functional, and increasingly, “green”.

“Functional really means that they (the suburbs) need to be relatively comfortable, that the required amenities are available and easily accessible, and that public transport is one of the top priorities when it comes to providing such amenities,” he said.

Dr Whitzman agrees. “We used to build out Melbourne by building a train station first and then by building a community around the train station. We really don’t do that anymore.”

Ian Woodcock, a Research Fellow in Urban Design at the University of Melbourne is helping more people understand the importance of sustainability in planning.

“To make low-density cities more sustainable, two main things need to happen: better utilisation of public transport and intensification of land use,” he said.

“A place that works this way will be one that is walk-able and accommodates cyclists and children, and one that is perceived as safer, due to the higher numbers of people in public space throughout the day.”

Increasingly, the word “sprawl” is being used to describe (in particular) Melbourne’s growth, and the negative perceptions associated with it are also cause for concern to planners trying to make our communities more functional.

Dr Nichols cites Dandenong, and more specifically Doveton, as an example of a satellite suburb developed post-World War II to solve a housing crisis and create a convenient employment-business-residential arrangement.

“Unfortunately it was based on manufacturing, which has died off since the 80s, and now it is one of just a number of areas that suffer from a lack of employment opportunities, and which therefore serve more as dormitory suburbs for commuters who travel to the city, than as symbiotic work-life suburban areas.”

Setting aside issues of infrastructure, how can we improve the use of our suburbs and spaces? Students at the Melbourne Graduate School of Design, under Mr Woodcock’s supervision, recently completed a series of “revitalisation and re-urbanisation” designs of the old Atherton Gardens site in Fitzroy as a case study. Though many people would associate the word “urban” with high-rise apartments, Mr Woodcock says that it’s important to note the different ways such towers can work.

“Urban can also mean diverse, vibrant, vital,” he said.

“In the case of apartment towers, they tend to reduce this urbanity because of the way that people connect with each other and the place they live in is organised by the buildings and large spaces around them - they are disconnected from everyday streets.
“This leads to loss of vitality, so any re-urbanisation process should also be called re-vitalisation, which comes back to intensification of use; higher residential densities with non-residential uses mixed in.”