Out and about: People enjoying the night life in the Melbourne CBD. Credit:Jesse Marlow In 1994, Melbourne City Council embarked on a groundbreaking study of its citizens and their city. Places for People was carried out again in 2004, and is now nearing completion for a third time - giving Melbourne a contemporary record and 20-year archive that only a handful of cities can boast. "Almost unique, especially in that part of the world," says Danish architect and urban design guru Jan Gehl, who pioneered Places for People in Copenhagen. Melbourne was one of his first foreign experiments. Under Gehl's guidance, Melbourne started watching its people closely - where did they come from, how did they get here, where did they go, how did they go there, where did they linger, where did they sit and where did they stroll? Out of this attention to the smallest details - even the colour of the pavement and the awnings on the buildings - the MCC now has 20 years of hard numbers - data credited with underpinning all that global praise about Melboume's "liveablity". Gehl has an oft-quoted line that recasts the blandness of that ugly word. A liveable city is not a static place. It's a permanent social gathering, of shifting moods and energy, guests flowing in and out, the buzz changing but never dying. It's Gehl's mantra: "A good city is like a good party. People stay for much longer than is really necessary because they are enjoying themselves." By this measure, Gehl considers Melbourne in 2014 close to the global gold standard - and that's as much a surprise to him as anybody, given what the CBD was like when he first saw it in 1976.

Hosier Lane. Credit:Jesse Marlow ——————- Ask anyone who remembers and they won't mince words. Source: Places for People. Robert Doyle quotes a 1978 Age article decrying "an empty, useless city centre".

Former Labor premier John Cain says: "Very much a dead heart." Flinders Street Station. Former lord mayor Winsome McCaughey: "Very sleepy." Jan Gehl: "Completely neutron bombed." Melbourne was a shadow of the grand dame of the 19th century on the back of a mining boom that was, literally, the city's golden age. A brief spurt of 1956 Olympic pride didn't deliver long-term transformation. "We had this extraordinary city that had won the Olympic Games and then gone to sleep," McCaughey says.

There was no shortage of emerging leaders, planners and activist residents keen to wake the place up. Cain ended Labor's wilderness years in 1982, and had hopes for a city very different from the one he'd grown up next to in Northcote, at a time when anyone who didn't work in the CBD had very little to do with it. "A visit to town was a big day out." Cain's familiarity with the centre grew when he took an after-school job at Myer. No one had any other reason to be there. The notion that people might live in the CBD was thought batty. "A few that we thought were odd people lived in the lofts in hotels or some exotic accommodation like that." McCaughey was elected as an independent to a reconstituted city council in late 1982 after years of chaos that had seen the previous MCC sacked. McCaughey had just returned from living in New York, aware of what a vital residential metropolis could be. She had two broad missions: save the heritage buildings, and bring a moribund CBD to life. "There were only about 100 residents in the CBD. There was nobody there ... what we did was say, 'We've got to enable the buildings to house people and we've got to bring the street life back." Geoff Lawler, a state government expert for 17 years before joining the council in 1996, says Melbourne benefited from a broadly united approach from Spring Street and town hall. "It's been a mix of state and local government." Gehl agrees this is crucial - pointing to Sydney's state-versus-city conflict as a case study of how not to get things done. "They've been very, very slow. Melbourne didn't have that."

McCaughey's praise for planning ministers she worked with, Evan Walker in particular, suggests this is true. While she didn't like Cain's "count the cranes" style, they shared a belief that antiquated licensing laws had to go and the streets opened for al fresco dining. Cain calls liquor law reform "the biggest single step in the transformation of the CBD". With pavement dining permitted and booze restrictions loosened, the city had something to build on - and it did. There were 604 food and beverage outlets in the CBD in 1982; today, 1978. Even harder to imagine, there were two outdoor cafes in the CBD in the 1980s; today, 534. But the most significant impact was the arrival in 1983 of a migrant whose planning smarts were snapped up by the MCC. Urban designer Rob Adams, of Zimbabwe, found a city whose workday population seemed to be sucked out to the suburbs at 5pm as if by a giant vacuum. "It was deserted. The biggest change was realising that city's didn't have to be like that." Adams was a believer, and he had high-level support. In 1985, he delivered a strategy that essentially set out all he wanted to do - and predicted nearly all of what has actually happened since. But the big picture needed micro-detail to bring the vision of a populated, people-friendly CBD to street-level life. Gehl's Places for People research delivered that element when the MCC brought him out in 1993. Adams says such detail has enabled change in an age of tight budgets - small scale and incremental. Things like building frontages and lighting influence the way people perceive streets as places to stop, sit or shop - and also perceptions of safety. Doyle calls it "the palette of the city" - and underfoot, the city is getting durable, attractive bluestone footpaths as a result. Gehl's research delivered "the human dimension", Lawler says. "You can look at Places for People and look at the importance of detail. And you look at the macro scale and look at the importance of urban design, economic and sustainable use of land, and transport, which is critical."

This is where critics of planning policy take issue with both the MCC and the government, whose vision of a CBD dominated by ever-taller towers horrifies many. Cain calls it "very woolly". McCaughey fears we're "building an asylum", driven by greed. Michael Buxton, RMIT's professor of environment and planning, says the reach-for-the-sky policy violates the essence of Gehl's "human scale" philosophy of urban design. Buxton says Places for People has been invaluable. "But what tends to happen is that public bodies such as the Melbourne City Council think they've done their job when they come out with a report examining the better use of public space. That's only part of the equation, as [Gehl] himself notes. If the tower fetish continues unchecked, Buxton warns, the city we now celebrate will be ruined. "It will kill the goose." Jeff Kennett also has mixed feelings about the dramatic changes to the CBD. "It's now becoming very quickly a city of the world with all the problems and the challenges of the cities of the world." It's less friendly, he says, and traffic congestion is fast becoming a crippling issue". He wouldn't turn back time, but warns the city should proceed with caution as residential numbers boom. "I don't think the number of people matters so much as whether you can properly provide the infrastructure to accommodate that number - or whether you can change the way the city operates."

At town hall, the drivers of CBD policy don't disagree. Lawler says rapid population growth has been "a good problem to have" but has to be carefully managed. "Now as the city grows, it's moving into areas where [infrastructure] doesn't exist. Because of the tightness of space you can't let that get out of whack." The lord mayor, who will receive the latest People for Places report early next year, looks ahead to a city that builds on the kind of changes the research has already inspired: expanding the "tree canopy" to cover 40 per cent of the CBD, cooling the city by 5 degrees; pedestrian-friendly initiatives that build on findings showing 66 per cent of journeys are made on foot; an improved bicycle network. And much else besides - but Doyle says that in 10 and 20 years time, "I hope you'd still look at it and say 'Yep, that's Melbourne. The essential character hasn't changed." Adams says cities everywhere are facing major challenges over the next half century, with urban populations doubling, "You can't do that by building cities the way we built them in the past. We're going to have to do it by repurposing them, and Melbourne has gone through one of the biggest repurposing exercises in the last 30 years. "If that continues on it will set us as an example of what other cities can do." IN HISTORY'S PAGE …



TO SOME ears, modern Melbourne's much-trumpeted honour - "the world's most liveable city" - is a bouquet so bland it doubles as a brickbat. But a backhanded compliment is no big deal. The city's heard worse things. This will be the place for a village. John Batman gave Melbourne this famously pedestrian foundation statement in 1835. An aborted plan to also donate his surname to the new metropolis is the earliest evidence of hipster activity in the city. I do not like Melbourne much … what spoils the appearance now is the number of wooden buildings they are throwing up as they cannot get workmen for others.



William John Wills whinged about Melbourne real estate and then shot through to Queensland, a trend followed by British visitors in modern times. Wills can still be found in statue form, alongside Robert Burke, muttering about the ugly shops in Swanston Street. And what was the origin of this majestic city and its efflorescence of palatial town houses and country seats? Its first brick was laid and its first house built by a passing convict. Australian history is almost always picturesque… it does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies. Mark Twain, a visitor in 1895, finds it hard to believe Burke and Wills were really that bad with directions. Whenever I entered a crowd, it closed around me like an octopus. I can still hear the shrill, excited cry, "I touched him!". If I were out of reach, then a blow to my head with a folded newspaper appeared to satisfy the impulse.

The Prince of Wales was belted with newspapers in Melbourne in 1920, effective training for his later press troubles as rogue king. Today's tech-savvy mobs menace visiting royals with phablets, forcing a current heir to the throne to avoid the city completely last year.

If one really wanted to sin then one went to NSW. We were so intrigued by the low standard of morals, the gambling, the corruption, many of us could hardly wait to get there.

Keith Dunstan remembers Melbourne's simpler era of Sydney-envy - the pre-Opera House 1950s, before Sin City built itself some class. Today, while Sydney experiments with Amish law, Melburnians access world-class gambling, corruption and low morals in their 24-hour city. I came to make a movie about the end of the world and I certainly came to the right place.

Ava Gardner never uttered these words - a Sydney newspaper made them up - but their power was such that Melbourne City Council eventually abandoned the quirky nuclear wasteland vibe. Today, visiting femme fatales are happy to stay in Melbourne for as long as they can put up with Warnie. They wonder why I won't talk to them. I wouldn't drink their water, let alone talk to them. And if any of you folks in the press are in the audience, please quote me properly.

Frank Sinatra's 1974 Festival Hall stage meltdown - he also called female journalists "hookers" - was Melbourne's most notorious press incident since its newspapers were deployed against the Prince of Wales' head in 1920. I learned that about a year after he disappeared the City of Melbourne, his home town, decided to commemorate him in some appropriate way and named a municipal swimming pool after him. I just thought: this is a great country. Bill Bryson had never heard of Harold Holt but appreciated Melbourne's flair for naming landmarks after the first thing to pop into its head. The anus of the world. Jerry Seinfeld reckons he never said it. If he'd just added "Not that there's anything wrong with that" we would have taken it as a compliment.

As the world gets scarier It's a pretty decent area Melbourne Loading The envy of the world

Edna Everage, a ridiculous Melbourne creation created to ridicule Melbourne, offered a Moonee Ponds translation of "world's most liveable city" in a poem at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Take the mickey out of Melbourne? No one does it like the city's own great dame.