Article: Building a better future

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Building a better future

Building a better future

May 5, 2008

WE ARE born within it. Or we come to it later and stay. We work, study, play and are entertained within it. We raise our children in it. It is the canvas on which our lives are drawn.

It is our city, Melbourne. It lives and breathes through us, all 3.7 million of us. As we shape it, so it shapes us.

Today The Age publishes a reassessment of that shaping in the context of the State Government's planning blueprint 2030. The future does not arrive at the doorstep completely unannounced.

It also resides in the present, and it is clear, from what our team of writers have found, that the conditions and circumstances of Melbourne in 2002, when the 2030 strategy was devised, have changed in many ways. The great trick of planning is knowing both what it is needed for a city to prosper, and identifying, and acting upon, the trends that may affect that vision both adversely and in complementing it. The biggest flaw in 2030 was at its most basic level. Its authors had sought to map out the city when the ground had already moved under their feet. The city, unless strong visionary action is taken now, will be hit hard by future shock.

One of the greatest factors in moulding Melbourne now is the surge in people wanting to live in it. Six years ago, the Government thought that by 2030 the city's population would have grown by about one million, taking it to about 5 million. On present trends, Melbourne is likely to reach that figure in 2020, an acceleration that is having an impact already on housing and transport. (The upper range forecast is 6.2 million by 2020.) The Australian Bureau of Statistics had forecast two years ago that it would take until 2051 for Melbourne's population to reach 5 million. Clearly, something is happening here, and it needs to be understood if control is not to be ceded to market forces. No good can come of having an inner Melbourne and an outer Melbourne.

The premise of 2030 was to stop urban sprawl, in effect, to put up an invisible fence around the city at which subdivision would stop. The leakage of suburbs into the paddocks, hills and plains on the fringe was anathema to the concept of retaining and building upon the city's identity. It dilutes the positive, and replaces it with the bland.

The cliched image of endless red roofs, symbolising sameness and conformity, has become not only a threatening vision of the future, but a threatening reality.

Melbourne exults in its inner-city diversity and its seamless meshing of different cultures and its artistic and sporting activities and precincts. It is a vibrant, exciting and gratifying place to be, yet there are warning signs that need to be heeded. The pressures on a city come from both within and without.

Above all else, this must be a place of social equity where everyone, regardless of postcode, has the opportunity to take part in what the city has to offer. To this end, there must be alternatives to the car as primary means of transport. There must be alternatives to McMansions.

There must be choice. The revolution must start now.

In the past few years, Melbourne, as with all Australia's capital cities, has suffered under the groaning weight of a housing crisis: the lack of affordable stock, either to rent or buy. In a bid to relieve some of this pressure the State Government in March announced it would zone all available land within the urban growth boundary as residential, which could translate into 90,000 new housing blocks. This is planning with one step forward and two steps back.

The aim of 2030 was to reduce outer growth to 30%; however, it now stands at 60%. Housing planners need to look over the backyard fence at the possibilities of higher density design that offers people persuasive alternatives.

Melbourne's suburbs already sprawl over 100 kilometres. To stretch that growth without the proper provisions of infrastructure such as public transport only compounds other problems. Greater sprawl equals greater car and truck use, which leads to greater greenhouse gas emissions and congestion. The cost manifests itself in many ways, both economically and, in the broader sense, of liveability. If Melbourne is not to start cleaving into two social divides then a greater holistic approach has to be adopted to plan for the future. To that end, a new approach to governance of the city should be pursued. There is much merit in the formation of a new strategic authority to oversee planning for the entire metropolitan area, with input from the local councils. This would provide the big picture from broad visionary brushstrokes and the finer detail from councils giving local accountability to the process.

Our city is often cited at the top of world polls for its liveability. It is a citation for which we should be proud, and we need to protect it. Melbourne does not have an instantly recognisable icon. It does not have one of the finest harbours in the world, nor an opera house, its sails glistening in the northern sun. Its virtues are more subtle, notwithstanding allowing a nod and a wink, however, to the MCG in all its passionate glory. Melbourne has its bay, and it is only in recent years that we have come to realise the potential that has lain dormant on its shores around the CBD.

To grow, a city needs reinvigoration.

One area in which this can be done is in the continuing transformation of the docks area and, for that outcome, the removal of some of the freight storage and transportation to Hastings should be speeded up. The potential for affordable housing and mixed commercial development is enormous.

Opportunities abound to create a precinct that melds diversity and social pragmatism.

In an era of climate change, every step towards the future needs to be mindful of the carbon footprint it leaves behind. A particular challenge in the planning of Melbourne is answering this question: how do we manage population growth and yet reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and energy use?

There must be incentives, and a more prescriptive role from government, in addressing these issues. One of the biggest changes since 2002 is the ratification of Kyoto federally and the report by Ross Garnaut into emissions caps. The world has changed, Melbourne needs to change with it. Some solutions are necessarily long-term, such as tackling power station energy production, but others, such as using public transport, can be done in the short-term. Water, our scarce resource, needs to be viewed in a different way to decades past. It needs to be seen like a crop, to be harvested, and to be seen as the responsibility of all levels of society, from individuals to industry to government. Similarly, energy use. Every flick of a switch is a cost to society.

How people interact with their city also plays a part in downstream costs to that society, which is why, in planning Melbourne's future, a much greater emphasis should be given to creating amenities for cycling, running and walking. This is not just an issue of personal well-being; it helps to create community atmosphere. It pulls people into the streets and parks.

Businessman and transport guru Sir Rod Eddington recently delivered on a request from the State Government to devise a plan for meeting the east-west transport needs of the city. And while it did just that - a new tunnel here, a new road there - it necessarily, because of its scope, could not answer the greater question. What should be the prime shaper of this city: the car or the human?

What makes this city so marvellous, after all, is not the motor vehicle. It is the connection between its citizens.

And that is what we must nourish and celebrate.

Editors: Mark Baker, Royce Millar Design: Bill Farr Production: Gordon Farrer, Christina Carter For more coverage of Beyond 2030 go to theage.com.au