The challenge for Melbourne's urban and public transport planners is to ensure rapid growth in the city's population – it is expected to increase from about 4 million now to 8 million in 2050 – will enhance the liveability of the place rather than create a living hell.

The key requirement is that future governments abandon the "developer-led" planning installed by the Kennett government in 1992.

That process was facilitated by the earlier abolition of the city's metropolitan planning body, the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, by the Cain government in the name of making the planning process accountable to the elected state government. The MMBW published the last comprehensive master plan for Melbourne in 1954, and dictated where development would go by its control of the most expensive infrastructure – water reticulation and sewerage.

Premier Jeff Kennett's idea of planning was limited to dividing the brownfield site of the Docklands into large chunks suitable only for high-rise development, even though the medium-density alternative – three- to five-storey apartments – could have housed the same dwelling yield as high-rise apartments.