Melbourne’s route to overtaking Sydney lies in its land to the west
No other major Australian city has undergone, or will undergo, such a shift in its configuration this century.
The driving force behind the “flip” is geology. The tipping point was around the year 2000. The story begins with Melbourne’s settlement in 1835. For 165 years, Melbourne’s growth pushed east into the soft alluvial soils spilling west from the Dandenong Ranges. Orchards and dairy farms paved the way for the city’s eastward expansion; eventually these farms would give way to houses in places like Glen Waverley, Vermont, and Knox.
Melbourne’s west was harder to settle. A flat treeless basalt plain extended west through Werribee into the Western District. The soils were thinner. The bedrock was closer to the surface. Trenches for water pipes were harder to lay down.
By the end of the 20th century, Melbourne’s configuration reflected its underlying geology. Urban growth had extended 55 km east to Pakenham, but only 24 km west to Deer Park.
But then something happened.
The Western Ring Road was opened in the late 1990s connecting the city’s western front. Access to the CBD from the west funnelled across the Westgate and down the Tullamarine. An awakening ensued. Deer Park and a nascent Caroline Springs as well as new suburbs even further west could offer better access to the Melbourne CBD. The dream of homeownership was made attainable by rebalancing Victoria’s lopsided capital.
Melbourne’s east shaped the city’s form for 150+ years, with the growth front bumping into the Dandenong Ranges in the 1980s then deflecting southeast through Berwick, Cranbourne and Pakenham. This corridor today remains one of Australia’s leading growth areas. But it has been eclipsed by stronger growth over the past 20 years in Melbourne’s westside and especially in Wyndham.
Wyndham replaced the City of the Gold Coast as the nation’s biggest annual growth municipality early this century. The reason being that more people wanted affordable housing in a global city than wanted a seachange lifestyle.
Indeed, the outlook is for “the west” to continue to outgrow “the east” into the future. The reason is for this westside flip is that Western car-based cities seem unable to support continued residential growth (at scale) beyond 55km from the CBD. There is a point at which an urban mass becomes so large that other, intervening, job hubs emerge. However, lopsided Melbourne can deliver affordable housing within, say, a 24-45km radius of the CBD along this so-called Western Front.
But wait, there’s more.
Because Melbourne expanded east for so long, including during the railway expansion era (say, 1880-1960), the city now has 12 railway lines servicing the east (clockwise from Hurstbridge to Sandringham) and entering the CBD at Flinders Street. On the other hand Melbourne’s historically poorly serviced westside has just three lines (Sunbury, Melton, Werribee) that enter the CBD via Southern Cross.
And because Melbourne’s transport network burgeoned east, commuters en masse accessed the CBD via Flinders Street. As a consequence, the CBD’s pedestrian “ant tracks” channelled through the many lanes and arcades that connect Flinders Street with the prime shopping strips of Collins and Bourke Streets, namely Block, Royal, and Port Phillip arcades.
But with most growth since 2001 now favouring Melbourne’s west side, and with projections showing even more growth in the west over the coming decade, the pedestrian ant tracks – and property values – must shift to (or lift within) the CBD’s west end from, say, Spencer Street to Elizabeth Street.
Over the 35 years to 2035 Melbourne is expected to add 2.7 million residents and, in the process, will likely surpass Sydney as Australia’s largest city. The number added to Melbourne’s north and west over this timeframe is 849,000. The number added to the southeast is 450,000. The “closer west” is outpacing the “more distant southeast”; Greater Melbourne is rebalancing.
It explains why projects like the yet-to-open Westgate Tunnel are needed to get westside workers to their CBD jobs.
Over the same timeframe, Sydney will add 2.1 million, Brisbane 1.5 million, Perth 1.1 million, Adelaide 589,000. Melbourne is in a league of its own. It is a western car-based city the scale of, and with the growth momentum of, cities like Atlanta and Houston. And it has been made possible by the (recent) offsetting of the city’s early eastside bias that took Melbourne to Pakenham and beyond.
Wanna know why Melbourne will overtake Sydney? Melbourne offers developable residential land 30km from (ie west of) the CBD, while Sydney does not.
And that is why the ABS population projections show Melbourne as Australia’s largest city from the mid-2030s onwards. But it also means there’s a lot of work to do. With all this residential, commercial and industrial development unfolding in Melbourne’s west, there will come a time – perhaps it’s here now – when “the west” will need its own version of Toorak or South Yarra. Owners of businesses in the west will not be content to daily return home to the east; they will see such a commute as a betrayal of the community that delivered their prosperity.
Step up Essendon. Reinvent yourself, The Strand at Williamstown. Melbourne’s burgeoning west side will increasingly want its own ultra-premium residential enclave.
The flat treeless volcanic plain that Melbourne shunned for more than a century is now rebalancing the city’s metropolitan form. It is redirecting foot traffic and commercial property values in the CBD. It is laying the groundwork for the formation of a Toorak-of-the-west. It is giving hope to thousands of young Australians (both immigrant and native) who will want a home of their own and a reasonable commute.
If you’re looking for a reason to commit to Melbourne over the coming decade, look no further than official population projections by local government area … and a map of Melbourne showing the geological substrata (bedrock). Melbourne’s westside story is a tale of early damnation followed (eventually) by glorious redemption. Hallelujah!
Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group; data by data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kanan
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