I love the grid of the Melbourne and Adelaide CBDs … but the suburbs and regions are reshaping city life

I am a big fan of the Melbourne city grid, especially its gracious squares, gardens and grand boulevards, writes Bernard Salt. Picture: David Caird

I am a big fan of town planning and strategic thinking. I love the grid of the Melbourne and Adelaide CBDs, and especially their gracious squares, gardens and grand boulevards.

The Australian colonies presented an opportunity to implement the latest thinking in urban design. Indeed, there was an intent to create a better version of the chaotic urban environment many immigrants had left behind.

It makes sense that Australia, a nation largely founded on immigration, should evolve as a proving ground for town planning. Since European settlement we have created new cities and accommodated urban growth on a vast scale. And there is every reason to expect our cities to grow further in the years ahead.

Over the past two decades, the strategic plans of our capital (and other) cities have embraced policies of densification, in which greater population levels are added to existing infrastructure. In the business world, this is called “sweating the asset” to get greater value out of a given investment (although I would argue there is a point at which there is too much sweat and not enough asset).

This way of thinking has evolved into a pattern of behaviour. Modern homes typically have water tanks which (notionally) reduce demand for municipal water supplies. Solar panels and battery storage also shift responsibility for power generation and storage from the collective to households. It’s all done to help the environment, of course, but it also has the advantage of freeing up funds that in a previous era would have been directed to creating public assets.

Around the turn of the century, Melbourne embraced an urban growth boundary to control suburban sprawl. The ideas of US academic Richard Florida in his book The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) were influential in planning and development circles at this time.

Out of this work came the idea that knowledge workers living and working together in the dense inner city generated a frisson that created entrepreneurial and/or economic activity. This idea supported the argument for density. But the pandemic unleashed powerful new forces that challenge the logic of how a city should operate.

The reign of the knowledge worker is giving way to new roles such as carers, who live and work mostly in the suburbs. Plus there is a proportion of people who will work from home several days per week.

If Australia does push into industries such as defence manufacturing, agribusiness manufacturing and pharmaceutical manufacturing – all of which tend to locate in suburbia – then it’s harder to support a strategic plan that directs resources to the further embellishment of the inner city.

I think the narrative of city life is changing in the post-pandemic era. Our priorities have shifted towards security and to the home, and our tolerance for commuting has lessened.

If this assessment is correct, then it’s more than town and strategic planning that is being reshaped by the post-pandemic era. It suggests a rising empowerment of moderately skilled workers based in the suburbs and regions, who therefore should have a greater say in how collective resources might be allocated.