Melbourne's urban sprawl: just how big can the city get?
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Version 0 of 1. While frustrated commuters may occasionally resent the sprawling suburbanisation of Melbourne, they should at least be thankful they are not a growling grass frog. The frog was once abundant across Victoria, considered so common that they could be fed to the snakes at Melbourne zoo. But Melbourne’s rapid spread means they are now just found in a few small pockets on the edge of the city, vulnerable to further expansion. Related: Melbourne: art, culture and coffee in the world’s most liveable city Just 1% of the grasslands that spread across Melbourne to Victoria’s western fringes before European arrival now remain. According to the Victorian National Parks Association, the golden sun moth, the plains wanderer and the striped legless lizard are, like the growling grass frog, under severe pressure from Melbourne’s bulging waistline. A Museum Victoria scientist, Claire Keely, who has led research into the genetic diversity of the growling grass frogs says: “The populations need to be connected in order to disperse but they have become fragmented.” She found that genetic diversity was low across almost all the groups she tested, threatening their long-term survival. “We are destroying their habitat and then creating new wetlands that they never move to, they just don’t work,” she said. “If you are going to have urban sprawl you need to be smarter about it, to have larger corridors for wildlife. Once you bring in the cats, foxes and rubbish of urban areas, species are in trouble.” Urban planning experts also question the benefits of Melbourne’s spread for humans. Last week Melbourne’s latest suburb, Rockbank, was announced – 29km west of the city, it will accommodate 25,000 people. A total of 50 suburbs have been bolted on to Melbourne since 2006, with more to follow. Plan Melbourne, the latest strategy on the city’s growth, forecasts that the Victorian capital’s population, now at 4.3 million, is expected to reach 7.7 million by 2051. This population growth, of about 2% a year, will require 1.57m new dwellings. Despite Melbourne being roughly three times the geographical area of London with just a third of the population, there is no hard, permanent urban boundary in place. “A first step is to do what other cities have done: set a growth boundary and stick to it,” says Carolyn Whitzman, professor of urban planning at the University of Melbourne. “We need to stop the speculation at the edges and fund infrastructure to keep pace with the population growth. We need a proper vision for this. “We are creating two Melbournes: an inner city of opportunity and choice, with lots of amenity, lots of jobs. The problem is that it’s unaffordable for the majority of people in Melbourne. And then there’s the new housing where services are lagging severely behind, which is socially and environmentally injurious to people.” While Rockbank will be close to a train station, there is no regular service running there meaning that, like so many Melbourne suburbs, residents will have to largely depend on cars. A landmark report by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian government, delivered in 2010, noted that Melbourne had largely emulated the “Australian dream” of spacious, low-density housing but added: “Dreams are important but ultimately need to be supportable if they are not to lead to economic, social and environmental disaster.” The report advocates housing density should increase in some areas, particularly around train lines. Just 3% of Melbourne’s land could accommodate 1m extra dwellings, in the five- to six-storey range, close to train stations. This would largely spare Melbourne’s green fringes. Instead, government strategies, such as Plan Melbourne, have focused on new suburbs and massive road building projects, such as the now-scrapped East West Link, to cope with the growing number of cars. With housing in central Melbourne becoming increasingly out of reach for many people, the rationale for new suburbs on the edges is clear: pleasant, affordable housing for all who need it. “More and more people want to call the west home and they deserve the opportunity to buy affordable land, build their home and access the infrastructure and services needed for rich and satisfying lives,” said Marlene Kairouz, cabinet secretary in the Victorian government, at the unveiling of the Rockbank expansion. But Whitzman argues that the new housing falls well short of the standard definition of “affordable housing” where people in the bottom 40% of the income range pay 30% or less of their income on housing. “It’s nonsense to say it’s affordable, especially when you need two or three cars to get anywhere,” she says. “In Europe, typically 5% of income is spent on running a car. In Melbourne it’s 15%. The average age of people buying a house is going up, housing stress is going up. There are cases of people moving to the outer suburbs and not having enough money to buy the furniture.” The situation is particularly stark for those on the margins of society. The Council to Homeless Persons pleaded with the state government this week to provide houses compulsorily acquired as part of the East West Link project to help end rough sleeping in Victoria. “We have over 1000 people in Victoria sleeping rough on any given night, and the solution to that rough sleeping is right under our nose: affordable housing first, and then the help people need to keep it,” says Jenny Smith, chief executive of the homeless group. There are a further 35,000 people waiting for public housing in Victoria. So how large will Melbourne get? Richard Wynne, the planning minister, did not respond to that question, but it is clear that new suburbs will keep arriving. Whether the associated services – education, health, social – arrive at the same time is another question. And further expansion does not just risk various species. A VicHealth-funded study found that Melbourne’s green fringe produces about half of Victoria’s vegetables, with this figure climbing to 90% for strawberries, herbs and cauliflowers. That’s not to say Melbourne isn’t a fantastic place to live. It’s the world’s most liveable city, according to the Economist, after all. But for many people the urban sprawl is a visual symptom of their struggle to find affordable, socially connected housing. “That ranking isn’t a measure of very much,” Whitzman says. “Sure, let’s have a little party, woo hoo, but let’s move on. I don’t want to poop on anyone’s cornflakes but there are better indicators of how a city is doing, and on inequality and ecological footprint we aren’t doing too well.” |