A Dream that Hurts the City

Elena Strelnikova
Sep 9, 2018 · 8 min read

Congrats, Melbourne, on becoming a 5 times millionaire! As I heard, the city’s population is expected to be doubled by 2050. Pretty soon!

Along with all the benefits to Melbourne’s economy and culture, this growth will bring lots of challenges. The most urgent and obvious of them are: how to house and move around so many people?

What if we let it be how it goes? So let’s see. People come to Melbourne having their dreams in minds: I am sure most of the newcomers would like to end up in a pleasant spacious house with a nice garden and a garage for a couple of cars. They dream about driving freely along wide straight roads, being employed by a wealthy company or starting their own enterprise, coming home and seeing their children’s smiles, mowing the lawn on weekends, and so on. It is a good dream and people deserve to live this way. Many people abroad have this vision of Australian lifestyle, as well as American one, that has been advertised by mass media, cinema and commercials during the last century. Immigrants come to these countries to try it, and no one should see anything cruel in this.

But again, what if all new Melbournians decide to live this life? What if each of us prefers to own a separate house somewhere is suburbs? Wouldn’t it lead to Melbourne’s territory being doubled, too? Would it be nice?

First of all, the city will face, — and is facing right now, — the problem of moving all its inhabitants around this enormous territory. I like the fact that most of the progressive Australians clearly understand all the negative effects of car-dependent urban development, and embrace introduction of public transport to as many urban areas as possible. It is visible that Australian cities don’t follow the path of some American anti-cities. In Melbourne, at least in inner suburbs, streets are walkable, green and diversified in use, car parking is not given privilege, crossing streets is not so tricky, and there are lots of other advantages.

It is assumed by Australian transport planning experts that Melbourne has a street pattern and density that make it feasible for all neighbourhoods to be served by properly operating and viable public transport systems, even in outer suburbs. It is obvious that we shall talk about smaller types of PT, — local bus networks in particular. It is considered highly accomplishable that nowadays Melbourne can create a bus system where each bus-stop is located not further than in 10-minute walk from the most distant residential house and is served each 10 minutes for 18 hours a day. And a system like this promises not only to be efficient but to avoid unprofitability.

But we also need to admit that no high-speed rail transit is going to come to every private house’s door of outer suburbs even now. These houses, of course, can be connected to big rail lines by local bus routes, — but not more than that.

Huge PT projects are not the best option for lower density areas. To me, they rather look like this

So let’s imagine Melbourne’s urban area is doubled by 2050, as well as its population. Even if we keep its sustainable street pattern and do our best to extend all the PT systems to the city’s future fringe, — will the wisest and most rational projects help Melbourne not to become a dystopia?

If we say Melbourne’s current density is fine, and we can keep it this way without much harm to transit needs and costs, can we say the same about the sprawl?

I am confident that sprawl is a real danger and Australian and American cities are facing its consequences now and going to face more in the future. What is so bad about the sprawl?

- transport infrastructure costs. In compact areas, moving people around is much easier and cheaper. And the longer distances are, the more money is to be put in the construction of roads and railways, in public transport operation, and so on. By the way, Wikipedia says that Melbourne already has one of the highest lengths of road per capita in the world. We should realise how much this affects the economy.

- environmental harm. To me, it seems a kind of double-game when people advocate the reduction of carbon emissions and — at the same time — their right to live in a private house in distance from the city centre and commute every day. Let’s just imagine if all those people don’t have to drive/use PT to get to their jobs! I am not a trustworthy source, but there are scientific papers showing that sprawl indeed affects CO2 emissions greatly.

- waste of time. Commuting from city’s fringes to workplaces costs time, too. What if people can save several hours each day? Wouldn’t they and their families benefit from it?

I have many more arguments to add though those listed are pretty convincing, aren’t they? I’d like us to check out if it is possible to find a less-sprawled city that is nice, comfortable and sustainable, that attracts people and is totally suitable to live in and be happy.

Let’s take a look at Melbourne as if we get so upset with Vienna overcoming it in the Economist ranking, so we throw it over the Austrian capital. I mean let’s compare the territories.

For this comparison map, I used Google maps showing cities’ boundaries this way. The scale is the same. And yes, there are other countries’ boundaries drawn black. Yes, this is Bratislava, another country’s capital.

Vienna is pretty compact. Though we must keep in mind that it’s the only ⅖ of Melbourne’s population the Greater Melbourne’s area is somewhat 24 times bigger than Vienna’s (checked it several times).

How do they achieve it? Does Vienna look like an overpopulated and cramped nightmare? Well, Vienna is a dense city. And it seems to me that density is something that Australian planners are scared most. When I read articles on Melbourne’s prospective ways of development, I see that no one wishes for the city to become denser, it’s seen as a way to make it less liveable. But the dense Vienna is liveable, — even according to the Economist ranking though cities’ planning is a factor Economist’s experts seem to be least concerned about.

So what does Vienna look like in fact?

No, it is Hong Kong, sorry. I confused the images. I must say, I see Hong Kong as a great success for a sustainable city with an extremely efficient infrastructure considering its physical conditions. But it is indeed super-dense.

When you have enough land, of course, you don’t need to build up. So Vienna, finally:

Is it that bad?

It is widely believed that when we talk about density we mean high-rise towers and a lack of free land. But no. In Vienna, they even have a bunch of vast parks and green areas. And it is not implied that everyone has to live in a tower.

People live in something like this:

Yes, I clearly understand that living in a city like this means foregoing the dream of a private garden and a house with an attic. I already stated that I am not trying to devalue this concept, I’m just insisting that we need to recognise what it is gonna cost Melbourne in future, — a city of, say, 10 million inhabitants? Should it become as well 20,000 km2 to keep this dream come true?

Do we see future Melbournians traveling to their CBD workplaces for 4 hours every day? Are so many roads gonna be built? If people of that huge city keep driving where all their cars will be parked? Oh, OK, there will be autonomous electrically powered vehicles. Even if these AV won’t need any parking spots at all, and they will be just moving all day long, they will need power and roads anyway.

If future Melbournians will opt for PT extensions (good for them!), well, who’ll pay for this? Public transport is extremely expensive and, in those conditions, it’s hardly going to become viable.

What alternative do I see for a 10-million Melbourne? Let’s list it:

- first, decentralisation. We need more attraction points proving jobs located in other places than the CBD and the inner suburbs. These places should be diversified in use being not just business districts but rather mixed-usage suburbs containing residential housing, too.

- good public transport should run through these new centres and connect them to each other. In case of higher density, no arguments against even high-cost projects arise.

- building normal-height apartment houses should be praised. 3 to 5 storey buildings are the best option for healthy urban density. These residential buildings should compose blocks, it will help to put grid street plan which is also important to urban liveability. Most Europeans live in such houses and in cities of such street pattern, it is a natural human-scale development.

- but what if people want to own a private house anyway? How can we decrease sprawl in this case? Well, I think it should become disadvantageous, expensive. Should the government introduce some sprawl-based taxes? I don’t know how it should be implemented. Anyway, the fact is the sprawl costs the city really much. So far, Melbourne has been wealthy enough to manage this situation and keep it going. But how long it’s gonna work?

I admit that the story is much more complicated than I am trying to put it here. And I’ll be happy if you share more information for my consideration if you see I missed something important. But anyway I think these thoughts were worth expressing, aren’t they?