Melbourne’s CBD is bursting at the seams. Here is where its next cities could be

Melbourne’s CBD is bursting at the seams. Here is where its next cities could beSee all 6 stories.

Seventy years ago, when Melbourne didn’t extend far beyond what we now consider to be middle suburbia, the state’s leading planners began plotting to decentralise the city.

Train lines and major arterials were largely designed in the 19th century with one destination in mind: the CBD.

The then chief planning authority – the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works – released a landmark report in 1954 that set out to determine the city’s future growth. It complained, even then, of Melbourne suffering from congestion and sprawling development. With a population of 1.4 million at the time, the board was preparing to hit 2.5 million by the 1990s (a figure reached two decades earlier).

Decentralisation was deemed essential and five new “district business centres” were selected – Box Hill, Preston, Footscray, Moorabbin and Dandenong – to become hubs of entertainment, department stores, offices, courts and government branches.

“Thus, for many people, the wearisome journey into the city centre could be avoided, and some relief afforded to the already overcrowded central area,” the report said.

In this series examining the possibility of a second CBD in Melbourne, The Age will delve into three of metropolitan Melbourne’s best options: Clayton, Box Hill and Sunshine.

Selected in consultation with experts, these locations are middle suburbs accessible to populous outer and inner parts of Melbourne, and sites of major transport infrastructure projects. They show promising signs of development and have been previously identified for their growth potential.

In 2023, Melbourne’s “second city” remains elusive despite successive published strategies, failed attempts from the state government and a population that has risen to more than 5 million.

A few carefully located cities

The Hoddle Grid and inner suburbs are choking, while Melbourne’s fringe has crept outwards as families fight for a slice of land to call their own.

But some experts hope that change may finally come at a time when the population is projected to reach 9 million by 2056, and as more people work from home and spend time in their suburbs after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Jago Dodson, director of RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research, says Melbourne’s bloated urban structure means access to high-quality jobs, public services and cultural experiences is increasingly imbalanced – even the arts and sports destinations are concentrated in the CBD.

“We should have been addressing that over the last four decades,” Dodson says. “Most of the focus has been on densifying the city rather than shaping the distribution of the densification. It’s basically letting density happen where the market decides.”

Melbourne’s geography means it is better suited to having a few carefully located secondary cities, according to planning experts who spoke to The Age. Having just one second city in the south-east, for example, would mean residents of the north and west won’t benefit.

Non-profit organisation Committee for Melbourne has previously called for the creation of a “meaningful polycentric city” (a city with a main centre and one or more sub-centres), while a Monash Commission report last year emphasised the need, accelerated since COVID-19, for a strong intermediary cities strategy: “We are at a key point in history to address long-standing environmental and equity issues … We can do better than returning to business as usual.”

A map showing the extent of the population sprawl in Greater Melbourne in 1954.Credit: Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme 1954 Report

Politicians have long known that Melbourne’s CBD-centric model isn’t sustainable: Dandenong was promised a major rejuvenation by the Bracks Labor government in 2006 to cement it as our second city, but it never achieved this goal.

Werribee residents were similarly let down when glittering plans for a $31 billion “super city” development were canned in 2019.

And Geelong has been gradually transforming from being more than a regional city. The relocation of government organisations has brought thousands of jobs, but transport access from Melbourne has been an issue.

Lessons from Sydney

Melbourne is on track to overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city in nine years. Yet it’s the northern rival that is working to establish its third CBD in Bradfield, with a $1.15 billion initial commitment from the NSW government, following Parramatta’s success as Sydney’s second city.

Former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull played a key role in helping to create the metropolis of three cities with Parramatta at its centre.

Lucy Turnbull was instrumental in turning Sydney into a successful polycentric city. Credit: Ben Symons

Turnbull says establishing second centres is important for large cities to preserve equal access to jobs, education and health services.

“If you have every single thing in a CBD, you have an equity and distribution problem where some people are taking two hours to get to work,” she says.

Given Sydney’s CBD is on the eastern edge of the city, Turnbull says it was imperative to establish a second city and Parramatta was an obvious choice due to its central location in the greater metropolitan region. It also had great bones: rail access, heritage buildings and parks.

Melburnians are battling bumper-to-bumper traffic again, as pre-pandemic congestion returns to the city’s roads.Credit: Wayne Taylor

To drive its success required huge infrastructure investment to create economic anchors, Turnbull says, including Westmead Hospital’s redevelopment, Western Sydney University setting up a Parramatta CBD campus and the relocation of businesses and government agencies. This was overseen by the Greater Sydney Commission, a body set up in 2015 and led by Turnbull for five years.

Suburban Rail Loop a distant prospect

“What is critical is genuine co-ordination and collaboration between the key government agencies that deliver the infrastructure that make a city – transport, education, health, culture,” she says.

“You can’t just draw on a map and say, ‘There we are, we’ve got a city’.”

Dodson says Victoria’s leaders have not been brave enough to fix the problem.

“No government has ever been really prepared to prioritise and say, ‘This is how many centres outside the CBD we’re going to focus on’, and then limit development just to those locations, because that creates in a sense winners and losers in some areas … and requires saying to businesses that these areas are to be favoured.”

The Andrews government’s showpiece infrastructure project – Victoria’s most expensive in history – is the $125 billion Suburban Rail Loop, which would bring 16 new stations connecting Werribee to Cheltenham, including an airport link. The 90-kilometre new railway would snake through Melbourne’s middle suburbs, intersecting with each existing Metro rail line and allowing passengers to skip going through the CBD just to get to work, hospitals or other destinations.

It’s spruiked as a project that would transform Melbourne into a “city of centres” and tackle unsustainable urban sprawl. The government will take on planning controls normally held by local councils over the precincts that surround each station.

Early works have started on the Suburban Rail Loop’s eastern section, running from Cheltenham to Box Hill, and on the line linking Melbourne Airport to Sunshine.

Funding for the north and west sections remains in doubt. Some critics say that the project advantages the already well-serviced eastern suburbs. It’s expected to take at least 30 years – and the backing of multiple governments – to be completed, potentially hampering the west’s chances at a flourishing secondary city.

But with the wheels in motion on construction, the rail loop may well influence Melbourne’s second city prospects.

“[The Suburban Rail Loop] is really a land-use plan that’s focused on creating new, mini CBDs beyond the existing CBD. It’s an incredibly expensive way of facilitating concentrated development,” says Dodson.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan at a Suburban Rail Loop announcement in Box Hill in 2018.Credit: Joe Armao

“For much less than $100 billion, you could probably create a mix of regulatory and fiscal incentives that could shape the way the city develops,” he adds.

Dodson suggests zoning certain locations as open or closed to commercial development, repositioning major education, health and government organisations, or offering tax exemptions to businesses that relocate to a designated new city.

“A laissez-faire approach has left [our city] with inefficiency and dysfunction.”

Infrastructure Victoria warned on Tuesday that the rail loop alone would not deliver enough homes for Melbourne’s growing population. And a 2018 Infrastructure Australia report urged governments to take a more active role in developing new centres through transport infrastructure, as well as new tools, such as financial incentives, to lure otherwise reluctant businesses.

Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan says the government will not “sit back” and has not ruled out the use of such mechanisms to steer development in its new station precincts.

Five years on from the Suburban Rail Loop’s announcement, it remains unknown what the government is planning for the areas around each station.

Allan says it is premature to comment on that before community consultation, starting this year for the eastern precincts, is completed, but she adds that the development and function of each area will vary according to local needs.

It means some locations may be designated as economic centres, while others may be more focused on residential needs.

“They’ll all be different, but they will all see increased job opportunities, increased housing and better access to services,” Allan says.

She stresses that a single second city is not the answer, but says Melbourne’s growth is at a point where establishing secondary centres is important. “Enhanced opportunities” in Clayton, Box Hill and Sunshine mean they all have strong potential, she says, but it’s too soon to declare them Melbourne’s future second cities.

“We don’t want to presume the outcome of what will go on in each of those places before we’ve had the opportunity to work with councils and communities,” she says.

Dodson says that Plan Melbourne, a major government report published in 2017 to guide the growth of the city through to 2050, was overridden a year after its release by the unveiling of the Suburban Rail Loop, and the city now needed an updated planning road map.

Allan acknowledges there are “things we’re going to work through as we contemplate how the city, how the population, continues to grow”.

‘More investment on the ground’

Professor John Stanley co-authored Plan Melbourne, which involved diverting the CBD’s rapid growth of knowledge-based jobs to seven new national employment and innovation clusters with strong transport links to help support outer growth areas. The plan also proposed creating 11 major metropolitan activity centres.

Stanley argues “building long suburban railroads” is not the best way to create major centres in middle suburbs.

“We need to be putting more investment into stuff on the ground … rather than putting so many eggs in the SRL [Suburban Rail Loop] and hoping that in itself will generate a whole lot of other development. It will, but it won’t be nearly as good for the growth,” he says.

“The pandemic has given us an opportunity, but we haven’t really taken it. It requires some courage and strong decisions from government.”

Melbourne’s prospective additional cities may not look like much now, but Turnbull says the Parramatta of today would have been unimaginable to many people 20 years ago.

“Don’t imagine it can’t be done, but it has to be done in a very, very well thought through way,” she says.

NEXT: Melbourne’s greatest hope for a second CBD

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