Melbourne Metropolitan Area

Survey

When Robert Hoddle laid out what became Melbourne's Central City area in 1837 he positioned its south-west corner next to Batman's Hill near the intersection of Flinders and Spencer Streets. The town's southern boundary (Flinders Street) ran approximately along the northern side of the Yarra River, but as the river did not flow exactly east-west, the central city block plan was tilted: northwards thoroughfares run north-west.

Peripheral thoroughfares running true north, and the cross roads true east-west, were achieved by Hoddle running a line north for one mile from Batman's Hill, and from the point where it ended drawing a line east for two miles and west for one mile. The resulting line became Victoria Street and Victoria Parade. At the end of the two-mile long line (Victoria Parade) he drew a north-south line that became Hoddle Street and Punt Road. So began the typical metropolitan grid of cross roads, laid out as farm blocks were surveyed and main roads drawn in along their boundaries.

Town and villages

Metropolitan Melbourne could scarcely be conceived of as such until after the influx of the goldfields population in the early 1850s. Central Melbourne was the primary township. Williamstown, surveyed in 1837, was the potential alternative port and seat of government, separated from Melbourne by Hobsons Bay, two rivers and the West Melbourne swamp. It was a satellite settlement, as were Warringal (Heidelberg, 1839), Sandridge (Port Melbourne, 1839) and St Kilda (1842). South Melbourne was a tent township for immigrants, but a formal township was surveyed in 1852. It was almost contiguous to Melbourne, and hence almost a metropolitan appendage, but the first true metropolitan settlements were North and West Melbourne, known as Parkside (1852) and Collingwood, which included Fitzroy. When a railway between Flinders Street, Melbourne, and Port Melbourne was opened in 1854 the latter arguably became linked in a metropolitan sense, but the railway was meant for freight more than commuters.

Various outlying village sites had been reserved in the late 1830s, such as Braybrook, Pentridge (Coburg), Templestone, Warrigal and at locations on the Moonee Ponds Creek at what are now Pascoe Vale and Westmeadows. Many more examples of villages were surveyed in the 1850s, including Northcote, Hawthorn, Templestowe, Braybrook and Oakleigh (all 1852-53). Most of them lay beyond metropolitan Melbourne, some staying in that state for over 100 years in the cases of Westmeadows and Templestowe.

Infant metropolis

Metropolitan Melbourne in the 1850s-60s was mainly confined to West and North Melbourne, Carlton, Collingwood, East Melbourne, South Melbourne and Port Melbourne. Mechanised transport links began with the Port Melbourne railway; and railway lines to Bendigo and Geelong (1859) included suburban lines to Footscray and Williamstown. Suburban lines to St Kilda, Hawthorn, Essendon and Brighton were opened during 1857-61. During the 1870s a suburban line was opened from South Yarra to Oakleigh, but it was during the next decade that lines to Coburg, Preston, Heidelberg and Box Hill were opened. That decade also coincided with the building of the cable tram network. During 1885-91 sixteen cable tram lines were opened, with a particular density in the inner northern suburbs; seven routes ran through Fitzroy and Collingwood.

'Greater Melbourne'

In 1878 the notion of Greater Melbourne was recorded in the annual Victorian Year Book. Greater Melbourne had 256,477 people, 29.51% of Victoria's population. The population figure is an exageration because Greater Melbourne was defined by a circle with a radius of ten miles from the city centre. Its area of 256 square miles was probably three-quarters rural.

The following table summarises 'metropolitan Melbourne' over the last 30 years of the nineteenth century. Areas are defined by the names of local councils, and their dates of incorporation approximate their inclusion in Melbourne's urban growth. The data was obtained from contemporary Year Books and the Statistical Register (1901).

metropolitan melbourne's population
Town, Shire, etc	Date Incorp1	1871	1881	1891	1901
Melbourne	1842	54,993	65,859	73,514	68,374
North Melbourne	1859	13,491	17,839	20,985	18,120
Fitzroy	1858*	15,547	23,118	32,455	31,687
Collingwood	1855*	18,598	23,829	35,066	32,749
Richmond	1855*	16,889	23,405	38,770	37,824
Brunswick	1857	4388	6222	21,955	24,141
Northcote	18712		1584	7741	9677
Prahran	1856	14,096	21,168	39,699	40,441
South Melbourne	1855*	17,101	25,374	41,730	40,619
Port Melbourne	1860*	6388	8771	13,058	12,176
St Kilda	1855*	9085	11,654	19,885	20,542
Brighton	1859	3059	4755	9887	10,047
Essendon	18613	2456	5061	24,369	28,372
Flemington, Kensington, Hawthorn	1860	3329	6019	19,623	21,430
Kew	1860	2430	4288	8476	9469
Footscray	1859	2473	5993	19,149	18,318
Williamstown	1856	7126	9034	15,936	14,052
Caulfield	1871**		2488	7992	9541
Oakleigh	1891				1273
Malvern	1871**		1797	8142	10,619
Camberwell	1871**		1525	6206	8602
Preston	18712		1410	3563	4059
Coburg	1871**		2659	5754	6772
Heidelberg	1871**		2775	4413	5008
Remainder		13,295	4664	9804	N/S
Total		204,744	282,947	489,407	500,000 approx

 ^{1 Date area was constituted as a town, shire etc}

 ^{2 Preston and Northcote first in Jika Shire (1871)}

 ^{3 Split into Essendon borough and Flemington and Kensington borough in 1882, but populations of combined boroughs shown throughout this table.}

 ^{*  Settlement already formed when severed from Melbourne Town Council}

 ^{** Originally incorporated as a shire.}

The depression of the 1890s caused a population decline in some places, and the figures had not fully recovered by 1901.

Metropolitan transport

During 1901-11 metropolitan Melbourne's population grew by nearly 100,000. The map below shows the local council areas, their populations and their population densities. Fitzroy's was the densest. Melbourne's is shown as less dense, but in reality North Melbourne (by then part of Melbourne council) had the densest population; Melbourne council's population density was diluted by public parks, industry, public buildings and the West Melbourne swamp. Port Melbourne's population was of middling density, but its housing was as crowded as Collingwood's; its western Fisherman's Bend area was almost uninhabited. The railway network was almost complete – a condition existing since the 1890s – although the outer circle through Camberwell is erroneously shown as a complete line. Electric trams were opened by local trusts in Kew, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Prahran, Caulfield and Malvern (1910-16), positioning those suburbs as middle class residential areas.

The provision of good public transport to the eastern and south-eastern suburbs confirmed a trend that had been evident for 50 years as better-off Melburnites chose to reside there. The topography was undulating rather than flat, it was well away from miasmic West Melbourne swamps, separated by the Yarra River from the unhealthy although densely populated Collingwood and Richmond flats, and the rainfall bestowed better conditions for exotic gardens. Although industry stayed concentrated in Richmond and Collingwood, noxious industries expanded westwards to the Maribyrnong River in the 1880s. There were also sandier beaches along Port Phillip Bay's eastern shores which, combined with sea breezes, provided a salubrious coastal strip. The Yarra Valley stream system was also more pleasant than the western plains, and its alluvial pockets and stream valleys were relatively fertile and well watered.

Importance of transport

By 1947 the census showed that metropolitan Melbourne's population had, in 35 years, more than doubled to 1.23 million. The inner suburban population densities had little changed, Brunswick and St Kilda being the exceptions. The population densities of the next ring of suburbs had all grown. Camberwell's grew the most, and Coburg, Kew, Caulfield and Brighton also grew sharply. There was also a clear sign of the south-eastern reach of metropolitan Melbourne, following the railway lines to Frankston (1882) and Oakleigh-Gippsland (1879-88), and the south-eastern electric tram lines to Brighton and Carnegie (1925-37). There were also signs of growth along the Maroondah Road corridor through Box Hill to Ringwood.

The great gap in metropolitan growth was in the north-east beyond Heidelberg. There were railway lines through Preston and Heidelberg, but Templestowe, encircled on the west and the south by watercourses and without any rail transport was to be an unurbanised space until the 1960s. Much the same applied in the south-east through to Mulgrave (Waverley), despite a railway to Glen Waverley having been opened in 1930.

Importance of motor cars

The key to the postwar suburbs was motor vehicle ownership. In Victoria it was:

year	motor vehicles per 1000 people
1947	141
1955	244
1960	286
1970	390

Although residential proximity to trains and trams continued to be important, motor car ownership enabled the settling of 'infill' suburbs like Doncaster, Vermont, Wheelers Hill and Dingley. The decision to place Victoria's second university at Clayton North in the late 1950s implicitly acknowledged the era of mass car ownership and the south-eastern spread of metropolitan Melbourne. Chadstone shopping centre (1960) did the same.

Freeways

The 1929 and 1954 metroplitan plans foresaw the need for freeways, and the West Gate Freeway and Western Ring Road follow lines drawn on maps in 1929. The 1954 plan presented an ambitious freeway blueprint and the 1969 Melbourne Transport Plan totted up a proposed 510 km of freeways. It partly reflected the 'great freeway building age' in California. It also threatened to strangle many inner suburbs, and in 1973 the State Government cut back the program in the face of the 'great freeway protest age'.

Melbourne's first freeways were a short South Eastern freeway near Burnley and the Malty bypass at Werribee (1961). Bigger projects were the Tullamarine, West Gate, Mulgrave and Eastern Freeways (1970-77). Attention later turned to outlying ring roads (1990s) and tunnels. Costly tunnel works resulted in freeway tolls.

Many freeway routes follow high power electricity easements and waterways.

Metropolitan planning

The concept of Greater Melbourne had been given formal expression in 1878 and during the next decade the concept of 'Marvellous Melbourne' was allowed to mask an inadequate metropolitan infrastructure, particularly in the area of public health. The Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) was established in 1890, with particular responsibility for water supply and sewerage.

In 1929 a Metropolitan Town Planning Commission brought down its report on Melbourne's recommended metropolitan form, but economic depression and the 1939-45 war stopped metropolitan improvements, other than a few ventures into slum abolition. In 1949 the MMBW was made the metropolitan town planning authority in an area encircled in a 15 mile radius from the GPO, but extended to Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston. In 1954 the MMBW published its report and planning scheme for metropolitan Melbourne, foreseeing district centres at Footscray, Preston, Box Hill, Moorabbin and Dandenong. It also foresaw a system of arterial roads that was a template for future freeways.

The Country Roads Board became the urban freeway construction authority. An early project was the Tullamarine Freeway (1970), which stimulated urban growth in Keilor and Sunbury. The Mulgrave and Eastern Freeways were opened during 1973-76. The Railways triplicated and quadruplicated tracks on the Waverley, Blackburn, Moorabbin and Footscray lines, enabling the running of express trains between the outer suburbs and the city. (The railway fare structures had been altered in 1958, stopping the railways and tramways competing against each other for inner-urban passengers and obliging the railways to cater more for outer-urban travellers.)

In its planning policies for metropolitan Melbourne in 1971 the MMBW proposed urban corridors in the directions of Werribee, Melton, Sunbury, Craigieburn and Whittlesea (Plenty corridor). It also sketched in the Berwick/Cranbourne corridor, which became probably the most vigorous of the late twentieth century growth areas. The following table shows population growth areas by local council areas during 1961-91. Councils created during 1961-91 have their dates of proclamation in parentheses.

metropolitan melbourne's growth areas: populations
	1961	1971	1981	1991
Altona (1957)	16,167	30,589	30,794	34,492
Berwick (1973)	n/a	20,474	35,888	69,144
Broadmeadows	66,306	101,100	102,745	102,996
Bulla (Sunbury, Craigieburn)	4824	8243	17,021	39,301
Cranbourne	10,908	16,266	34,285	70,821
Croydon (1960)	15,694	28,708	36,651	45,807
Dandenong	27,748	40,883	53,832	57,275
Diamond Valley (1964)	n/a	36,245	49.483	60,738
Doncaster and Templestowe	19,061	64,286	90,290	102,898
Eltham	n/a	23,712	34,210	42,670
Flinders	n/a	15,481	24,675	36,516
Frankston and Hastings*	35,605	68,337	93,633	113,728
Healesville	n/a	6410	8785	11,755
Keilor	29,519	55,616	81,593	106,076
Knox (1963)	n/a	56,876	88,245	121,982
Lillydale	18,284	36,162	61,238	78,475
Melton	1804	5974	20,349	34,736
Moorabbin**	95,669	109,588	96,439	94,161
Nunawading**	53,246	90,702	95,523	91,468
Pakenham (1973)	n/a	12,636	17,621	27,619
Ringwood	24,247	34,751	38,259	40,308
Sherbrooke (1964)	n/a	20,484	29,639	36,554
Springvale (1955)	28,526	58,374	77,817	89,478
Sunshine**	62,321	76,427	92,424	94,020
Waverley	44,987	97,033	121,767	118,265
Werribee	13,689	25,116	39,233	72,230
Whittlesea	11,490	30,327	64,946	95,672

 ^{*  Frankston and Hastings Shire made into two municipalities in 1960}

 ^{** Early postwar suburbs: 1954 census figures were Moorabbin, 65,332; Nunawading, 23,855; Sunshine, 41,332.}

There was a noticeable population decline in early/middle postwar areas such as Moorabbin and Waverley in the 1980-90s. The outer suburban councils continued growing into the twenty-first century, although they were amalgamated, mostly with new names, in 1993-94. They are printed in bold font in the above table.

The metropolitan growth areas during 1991-2011 were:

metropolitan melbourne's growth areas: populations
local government area	1991 (est)	1996	2001	2006	2011
Brimbank (most of Keilor & Sunshine)	144,277	148,973	162,931	168,215	182,735
Cardinia (Pakenham, east Cranbourne)	38,704	40,533	45,305	57,115	74,176
Casey (Berwick, west Cranbourne)	117,001	148,957	175,505	214,960	252,382
Hume (Bulla, parts Broadmeadows and Keilor)	106,570	115,729	131,182	147,781	167,562
Knox	130,378	130,401	141,108	146,740	149,300
Melton (plus small parts Bulla & Werribee)	36,170	39,109	51,685	78,912	109,259
Mornington Peninsula (Flinders, Hastings, Mornington, part Frankston)	109,768	110,122	124,891	136,482	144,608
Nillumbik (most of Eltham, Diamond Valley, part Whittlesea)	53,071	54,276	57,932	59,792	60,342
Whittlesea (most of former Whittlesea)	97,361	101,691	113,784	124,647	154,880
Wyndham (most of former Werribee)	63,415	73,691	84,861	112,695	161,675

In the period 2006-11 there was a lot of growth in western suburban Melton and Wyndham.

Metropolitan planning, twenty-first century

The MMBW planning scheme (1954) foresaw that development should be concentrated around district centres such as Footscray, Box Hill and Dandenong, all based around public transport nodes. Urban sprawl was not particularly worrying at that time, and the interwar standard house block of 50 x 150 feet was the accepted norm. (Often described as the quarter acre block - it was actually one sixth - the dimensions could go up to 60 x 160 feet.) The standard applied whether in upmarket North Balwyn or in State housing estates in West Heidelberg or Broadmeadows.

By 1970 urban residential sprawl was well to the fore. Future growth could go out along public transport corridors or by infilling between the corridors and creating an even more car-dependent metropolis. Planning opted for keeping to the transport corridors and designating the potential infill areas as green wedges, ie keeping them as rural conservation, market garden or public open space areas. Already, however, there had been instances of development gobbling up potential open space. Classic early examples had been drive-in shopping centres: whilst developers preferred cheap land away from a commercial centre, usually land of sufficient acreage for a drive-in centre was not to be found in existing centres. Some car-dependent residential centres also got away from planners: Vermont South was developed in the 1970-80s in orchard country, with no railway and 7 km east of a tram terminus. The tram service was finally extended to it in 2005.

In 2002 the Melbourne 2030 plan was released. It repeated the 1954 concentration on existing activity centres, the 1971 preference for green wedges and the continuation of higher density housing ('the compact city policy'). Density was achieved by dual occupancy, eg putting a second house on the suburban back lawn, smaller house lots, row houses, apartments and recycling of industrial land for residential living. Activity centres were graded by several levels of size in Melbourne 2030. 'Principal activity centres' were divided between about two-thirds around rail transport, eg Box Hill, and one-third other, eg Chadstone.

Housing

Higher density housing came in for sustained public criticism, particularly in higher value tree-lined suburbs such as Balwyn and Camberwell. There was a trenchant campaign to stop a high-rise mixed development in Burke Road, Camberwell, overlooking the railway station. The proposed development stalemated. Shortly afterwards the Government called in a development for a multi-storey tower 1 km down Burke Road at the Camberwell junction. Soon called the 'green latrine', the tower nevertheless went ahead while the railway station land stood idle. It was one in the eye for eastern suburbs better-planning advocates.

The demand for detached houses was unabated, as couples had children and moved out to Point Cook or Pakenham. Green wedges came under increasing pressure for land subdivision, notably in Heatherton where market gardens are the hole in a doughnut of south-eastern housing.

Since about 2002 when Melbourne 2030 was launched, a standard dwelling-and-land package became increasingly unaffordable for aspiring homeowners. The solutions to housing costs were migration to peri-urban sites, outside the plan's urban growth boundary, small-house packages, or apartments. However, most apartments were 70 sq metres or less, and small houses on a block half the size of the once standard 50 x 150 feet fell short of many families' expectations. Most small-house packages were on the urban fringes. In 2010 the Government approved extra land releases totalling 41,600 hectares on the urban fringe, a supply-side initiative that might stabilise or lower prices for house lots.

Housing and land affordability have altered profoundly since the 1960s. In 1967 a 700 square metre block of serviced land in Victoria cost $4250, including $550 profit. (A serviced block included drainage, roads, paths, channelling and connection of water and electricity). The cost was 1.22 years of the median adult wage. In 2011 the median land price for a block probably two thirds the size of the 1967 standard was $209,000, 3.02 years of the median adult wage. The disparity for buying an average house was more:

Year	Median house cost $	Median wage/year $	No of years of wage
1967	9638	3474	2.77
2011	478,000	69,170	6.84

^{Sources: Study in land usage, Housing Industry Association, January 1968; Victorian Year Book, 1969; Housing Industry Association website (2012): Commonwealth Bank affordability report and HIA residential land report}

Migration to peri-urban centres had been under way for several years, usually to places such as Wallan or Garfield on rural trunk railway lines. The trade-off for longer travel is that in those places an affordable house purchase comes with twice as much land as a house on the urban growth boundary.

Populations

Greater or Metropolitan Melbourne's census populations have been:

year	population*	share of victorian population (%)
1851	23,143	23.7
1861	139,916	25.9
1871**	215,991	28.9
1881	288,169	33.0
1891	486,620	42.0
1901	501,580	41.5
1911	612,190	45.7
1921	800,520	51.6
1933	995,800	54.6
1947	1,228,300	59.5
1954	1,524,111	61.5
1961	1,984,936	67.2
1971	2,575,000	71.5
1981	2,803,600	71.0
1991	3,145,600	71.4
1996	3,283,278	72.0
2001	3,338,704	72.4
2006	3,592,591	72.8
2011	3,999,982	74.7

 ^{* These figures obtained from Victorian Year Book 1973, and they differ from contemporary totals in the previous table for 1871-1901.}

^{** Greater or metropolitan Melbourne was defined by a circle of 10 miles radius until 1920.}