In Melbourne’s Federation Square, people are sitting on the steps, eating lunch among the pigeons under a sky that threatens drizzle. The cascading crazy paving and interlocking sandstone facades supposedly, in the architects’ vision at least, represent the desert heart of Australia. Across the road, a banner hangs from the walls of St Paul’s Cathedral: “Let’s fully welcome refugees.”

Melissa, an academic, walks out of the Koorie Heritage Trust, housed in the Yarra building on the square’s south side. It is due to be demolished to make room for a “flagship” Apple store, under plans announced by the state government a few months ago out of the blue and without public consultation.

The proposal for the jarring two-storey pagoda, dubbed “the Pizza Hut” by critics, was met with a fury that is hard to over-estimate. Petitions were started. Public debates were held.



Q&A What is Australian cities week? Show Guardian Cities is dedicating a week to exploring the opportunities and challenges of Australia's rapidly growing cities. The nation of nearly 25 million has one of the fastest-rising populations of all OECD countries, overwhelmingly focused on its biggest cities: Sydney and Melbourne. But with car dependence, urban sprawl and unaffordable housing threatening their famed "liveability", are they ready for the challenge? Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Brisbane face similar issues, while nationwide, poor indigenous consultation is a growing urban issue. Australian Cities Week, a collaboration with Guardian Australia, seeks to reveal and celebrate the culture, architecture, wildlife and character that bolster these cities' reputations as unique and desirable places to live.

Melissa is “very, very upset” about Apple intruding in this public place. “This is a nice spot for people to be.”

When Federation Square opened in 2002, it was a shock: uneven surfaces, all angles and scant greenery. Oh so modern, and so out of place alongside the elegant, establishment Melbourne of the 1910 Flinders Street railway station and St Paul’s Cathedral across the road.

“This is a nice spot for people to be” ... bars line the edge of Federation Square in Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Watson/Getty

But like everything about Melbourne – a bar you stumble upon, your favourite barista, exuberant street art in tiny laneways – Fed Square grows on you. Film star and Melburnian Chris Hemsworth has said it is a “mellower Times Square, where all paths seem to lead”.

It attracts 10 million visitors a year, two million more than the Sydney Opera House. Locals and tourists have embraced it as a place to both protest and celebrate. It is a civic place: an old-fashioned term that somehow captures something indefinable about the city.

The design for Apple’s controversial new flagship store. Photograph: Apple

It was here that more than 150,000 people protested the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the biggest anti-war gathering in the country since the Vietnam war. We come together to share events on the big screen – World Cup soccer, the Australian Tennis grand slam, and especially Australian Rules Football, the free-flowing game we follow obsessively. We take free dancing lessons and meet friends, or swarm to catch a glimpse of Oprah.

If Melbourne is going through a wobbly moment – and it surely is – you can sense it here. For a city weighed down by its gong as the “world’s most liveable city” for seven years straight, it’s uneasy about where it’s going, uncertain whether it wants to be a global megacity doubling its population to eight million by midcentury, or hang on to its charms.

The city has been through many booms and busts since its European foundation in 1835 but, as urban historian Graeme Davison puts it, one of the threads through its history has been a quaint sense of civic values; an idea of a shared purpose beyond commerce and getting ahead.

Davison is the author of The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, chronicling the heady days after the Gold Rush in the 1850s. This was a time when Melbourne swaggered – it was reputedly the richest city in the world and the fastest growing.

Davison says the city has always been a pragmatic, commercial place – it was settled by land speculators, after all – but from its earliest days Melbourne had a strong streak of public benevolence. A site for the city’s glorious English-style botanic gardens was picked barely a decade after it was founded. A few years on, its early leaders thought to establish what would become the National Gallery of Victoria, the first major art gallery in the country.

Isn’t it time we grew up and recognised that not everything that is important to our collective life has a price? Graeme Davison, urban historian

“On the whole Melbourne has been that kind of city, but I sense a danger to it now,” says Davison.



There are many strands to that danger: astonishing population growth – the fastest of any capital in the country – and rising inequality, epitomised by housing prices beyond the reach of ordinary wage earners (houses have a median price tag of more than $AU 900,000 – though Melbourne remains cheaper than Sydney, which tops $1m).

It has become a two-tiered city, with cosmopolitan Melburnians living near transport and cultural facilities, and the neglected fringe dwellers sitting in traffic for hours to get to work. Then there is the fury over Federation Square, and the idea that the public’s sense of ownership of it may be lost.

Davison was so dismayed about the Apple announcement he wrote an article for The Conversation website. “It would not occur to the average Briton to ask whether Trafalgar Square is paying for itself, much less to install an Apple store beside Nelson’s Column,” he wrote. “Isn’t it time we grew up and recognised that not everything that is important to our collective life has a price? That commercial values do not trump civic ideals?”

A protest by Indigenous rights activists in the city’s centre. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty

It was a “plea from the heart” to recognise that the idea of “civic good” is threaded through Melbourne’s history and is central to the city’s character, says Davison.

Unlike New South Wales (NSW), Queensland and Tasmania, the state of Victoria was never a penal colony and Melbourne was never a convict town. The Gold Rush made it a boomtown: optimistic, modern, and seductive to so many people dreaming of gold that its population soared from 29,000 to 169,000 in a decade. Then in the 1890s came the crash and the depression; a slump in wealth and confidence from which it only gradually recovered.

Melbourne’s leaders were often different to those in other places in Australia, says Davison: progressive, looking to the long-term. This was the city of Alfred Deakin, a progressive liberal crucial to Australian federation, and later prime minister; of H B Higgins, the judge who brought down the famous Harvester decision, which guaranteed wages high enough for “a human being in a civilised community”.

“All those people articulated common values in Melbourne,” says Davison. “Melbourne had a character that tended to draw people to the middle politically.”

For much of last century, Melbourne was the most establishment of places, known as the jewel of the Australian conservative party’s crown. It was censorious. Pubs shut at six, because that was good for all of us, leading to the famous “six o’clock swill”, where boozers would down as many as they could before closing time. It was – and remains – the private school capital of Australia.

But a few decades ago, Melbourne threw off its staid image. Mass immigration after the second world war shook it up, and clever planning brought the central business district to life. The Postcode 3000 campaign that began in the 1990s is considered an international lesson in how to revitalise city centres that hollow out after the work day ends.

A few decades ago Melbourne shook off its staid reputation to become an eclectic, cultural place. Photograph: NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

About 150,000 people now live in central Melbourne, and high-rise apartments house people, as well as offices. More people brought more nightlife and cafes, and old laneways – once a dumping ground for trash – were transformed into hidden gems.

Along the way Melbourne has become the most politically progressive city in Australia. If it were up to Melburnians, Australia would already be a republic and have negotiated a treaty with Indigenous Australians.

It’s time to accept that Melbourne has, over the past decade, lost much of its coveted liveability and no longer deserves the title Josh Gordon, The Age

Almost 65% of voters in the state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, voted Yes to the same sex marriage survey last year, compared with 57.8% from NSW. A Green politician, Rohan Leppert, has a good chance of becoming the new lord mayor of Melbourne at next month’s election. If that happens, he will be the first Green to oversee a capital city in Australia.

Even Melbourne’s conservatives tend to be small “l” liberals at heart. The radio shock-jocks of Sydney are disdained by Melburnians, who would rather debate than shout.

The city was transformed in large part by the astonishing influx of immigrants after the second world war – many from the UK, but tens of thousands from Italy and Greece, as well as displaced East European Jews. Then in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Vietnamese immigrants came.

Melbourne has been transformed by an influx of immigrants from Italy, Greece, Vietnam, China and India. Photograph: Kelly Defina/Getty Images

Melbourne is in now in another people boom, with around 120,000 new residents settling in the city each year, and record immigration from China and India.

Last year, the state of Victoria saw the addition of 144,000 new citizens, with the vast majority settling in Melbourne – way above the national average of 1.6%, which is way above the OECD average. In the decade to 2016, Melbourne added a quarter of its population, growing faster than London, Vancouver or Mexico City.

Population growth is the conversation Melburnians are having – or want to have, if political parties would engage. The political editor of the Age newspaper, Josh Gordon, articulated the unease last year when he wrote that the pace was unsustainable: “It’s time to accept that Melbourne has, over the past decade, lost much of its coveted liveability and no longer deserves the title.”

If we keep going with city rents and prices the way we are, we’ll end up in a city where only the very rich will be able to live Sally Warhaft, mayoral candidate

Melbourne is headed towards a population of five million and is predicted to overtake Sydney as Australia’s most populous metropolis by the 2030s. Its growth is dizzying, and the city is groaning with it.

The state government is trying hard now to provide the infrastructure needed. Cars crawl through city streets dug up for the biggest public transport project Victoria has ever undertaken: the $11bn Metro underground railway project that will add stations and ease bottlenecks. The problem is that it won’t open until 2025, by which time the city will have added another million people.

High demand for housing is one reason prices are out of reach for many. “If we keep going with city rents and prices the way we are, we’ll end up in a city where only the very rich will be able to live,” says Independent mayoral candidate Sally Warhaft. “The people who make the city tick will be forced further and further away.”

Davison says he worries about the pervading political message that there is no alternative to rapid growth. “There is a legitimate argument about how big the city can be, and how big is should be. Just to take it for granted that this is irresistible is a mistake.”



We meet for lunch in Box Hill, a suburb about 20km east of the city centre that is a designated “activity centre” – which means it is slated for growth. Once a conservative, white middle class house-and-garden suburb, it remains one of the few quaint spots in Melbourne that is “dry”. There are no pubs or clubs, and restaurants cannot serve alcohol – although that is slowly and quietly changing.

Today it is a suburb where 30% of residents are Chinese or Hong Kong-born – the highest percentage in the city. Thirty-storey high rises have popped up, with more on their way. There is unease, even resistance from the local council, but it’s happening: Box Hill will be a suburb of skyscrapers.

Davison has no problem with areas being earmarked for fast growth, but fears that what is being lost is Melbourne’s character: its sense of connectedness, of civic good. More prosaically, Melbourne is one of the lowest-density cities in the world – a great sprawling place. Davison says that it might seem an outdated, 20th-century notion now, but putting space between people made city living less irritating and more comfortable.”

Major roads cut through housing developments in suburban Melbourne, where commuters face acute traffic congestion. Photograph: georgeclerk/Getty Images

Box Hill is a hotspot, but if you really want to see growth, look to the west of Melbourne: once derided and neglected, it provided workers for big manufacturers that have slowly gone out of business. Wyndham, an outer south-western local government area, is growing at a frenzied pace. With a 37% population increase between 2011 and 2016, it is now home to 250,000 people.

People move here because it gives them a chance to own a house – you can buy a three-bedroom place for $450,000. Among the incomers are thousands of immigrants, especially from India. Ninety babies are born a week – its mayor, Peter Maynard, knows the statistics by heart.

Wyndham is a terrific place to live, he says – “people say g’day in the street” – but it has its strains. For the first time, the council has put up temporary, demountable buildings to house kindergarten children because demand is too high to wait for permanent structures.

“We’ve got about 26 kindergartens now, and we still need another 26 in the next 17 years,” says Maynard. “We need 20 primary schools and five secondary schools. Build us five primary schools yesterday and we’d fill them already.”

One of Wyndham’s claims to fame is that it has the highest proportion of people in the country spending two or more hours a day in traffic travelling to and from work. #nightmarecommute was the hashtag used to document the area’s transport woes on the inaugural western suburbs’ “National Nightmare Commute Day” last year.

Melbourne is one of the lowest-density cities in the world. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

Across Melbourne there is angst about infrastructure, and governments are scrambling to catch up. Even with all the road and public transport work going on, it is estimated that half of all car trips in peak hour will be congested in two decades, up from a third now.

There are murmurings in Australia’s most successful multicultural city that perhaps immigration should slow for a while to allow everyone to take a breath; for a few more schools to be built, for public transport to improve, for housing costs to settle a little. Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr has called Australia’s rate of population growth – far higher than in comparable countries – a “weird experiment”. Sydney is also struggling to cope, but nowhere is that struggle so obvious as it is in Melbourne.

Does Melbourne want to be a city of eight million people? If so, will it lose its connectedness, its civic values, of common purpose? Does it have a choice?

Davison’s phrase “Marvellous Melbourne” has often been cited with pride, but just as often with irony. How marvellous that young people can barely afford a house. How marvellous that people living in outer suburbs spend weeks of their lives stationary in traffic. How marvellous that homelessness is on the rise.

The “world’s most liveable city” is used ironically too, at least among many locals. The Economist Intelligence Unit has declared Melbourne to be so for seven years, a record, taking into account safety, health care, education, infrastructure and the environment.

Commuters at Flinders Street Station. Photograph: Michael Dodge/Getty

The Economist’s index is a corporate thing – a guide for companies sending their executive staff overseas. Politicians boast about it. “This world record is an amazing feat that all Melburnians should be extremely proud of today,” the-then mayor said last year, but those here roll their eyes. Travelling corporate executives will not live in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, or struggle to afford the rent, or spend weeks of their lives stuck on freeways.

It’s telling that the Economist notes that cities that score best tend to be mid-sized, in wealthy countries with low population density. The city that came second last year was Vienna, with 1.8 million people, then Vancouver with 2.5 million. “These can foster a range of recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure,” the Economist says.

Any bigger and people pay the price in crime, strained transport and inequality. Perhaps they lose touch with each other, too.

Back at Federation Square, it’s worth visiting the gallery of Australian art. It contains one of the most famous paintings of Melbourne: John Brack’s Collins St, 5pm. It’s Melbourne in the 1950s, and portrays dull workers leaving their offices and heading home to the suburbs. Every person faces the same way, their countenances drawn and unsmiling, a picture of dreary conformity.

Melbourne is nothing like that now. It’s lively and feisty, comfortable with its diversity and confident in its creativity. It’s just that it’s changing – again – very fast. It might turn out to be marvellous, of course. Or what makes it special might may swept away, without us noticing until it’s too late.

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