In one aspect it would be like nothing Melbourne has seen before: a shining city of 100,000 people, housed in soaring 50-level skyscrapers, employed in high-tech industries, and learning from the world's top universities.

But in another aspect – a lack of public transport to get there – it would be a quintessential major Melbourne residential project.

An imagined aerial view of the precinct.

Welcome to Australian Education City, a plan for Melbourne's west that has emerged as one of the bidders for 775 hectares of paddocks and old research laboratories outside Werribee that the Andrews government is selling.

The consortium behind the plan, Investors Direct, is one of five bidders to have lodged expressions of interest in the project. The Metropolitan Planning Authority is expected to announce the winning bidder next month.