Melbourne is becoming a city of “super-dense” towers, packed with tiny apartments that would be banned in Hong Kong, New York and London.

A scathing report from Melbourne City Council shows some of the city's newest developments are up to 10 times as dense as permitted by law in some of the world's most urbanised centres.

Illustration: Ron Tandberg.

Sydney, London and Adelaide all have rules that ban new one-bedroom apartments smaller than 50 square metres. But in Melbourne, 40 per cent of the city's newest apartments are smaller than this.

The boom in shrinking homes is being driven by a market that satisfies the needs of overseas investors at the expense of residents, according to the Melbourne City Council's draft housing strategy.