Future Melbourne: Driverless cars, more parks, living at work
DRIVERLESS cars, more public open spaces and mega buildings that combine home, work and leisure are predicted for the Melbourne CBD of the future. See some of the designs that will reshape our city.
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DRIVERLESS cars, more public open spaces and buildings that combine home, work and leisure have been predicted for the Melbourne CBD of the future.
The CBD currently has about 450,000 workers, but this will rise to almost 600,000 by 2030, including 370,000 in offices.
A recent Property Council of Australia seminar was told of fears that planning authorities were not doing enough to ensure there would be enough office space to cater for the burgeoning worker numbers.
One solution proposed by Hassell Studio architect Ingrid Bakker is the use of many city car parks that will be freed up with the advent of driverless cars.
“Now people drive in, they leave their car sitting there all day and then they drive home again,” she said at the Melbourne CBD in 2030 event.
“With a driverless car, it doesn’t belong to anyone, it drives around all day, you use it for the time you want it and pay for that time.”
Ms Bakker said vehicles could still be stored in basement car parks, but above-ground ones could be converted into offices, apartments, hotels or public open space.
“The share economy might bleed into office space and blur some of the traditional boundaries, so for example we’ll be saying ‘what’s office, what’s hotel, what’s residential?” she said.
“So we might get more mixed use developments.”
Town planner Sarah Horsfield, from Urbis, said the Melbourne Metro Rail project would be a game-changer, causing a big passenger shift from Flinders St Station to Southern Cross Station over the next 15 years.
Ms Horsfield said the city council and the State Government were not doing much co-ordinated planning to cater for the significant population changes that will occur across the city.
“We are going to have to change how we deliver services,” she said.
The City of Melbourne population, which includes some inner suburbs like Docklands and Southbank, is expected to grow from 100,000 now to more than 240,000 in 2030.
The CBD currently has about 38,000 residents and this is expected to rise to 65,000 by 2030.
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