Does anyone support the Melbourne 2030 plan?
Published 1 year, 7 months ago in Making News.Is the Melbourne 2030 plan dead? This dodgy State Government plan starts with the idea that Melbourne will have an extra one million residents by 2030. It then tries to work out how to fit ‘em in.
Basically it wants higher residential density, achieved by having people living near (or, indeed, above) public transport hubs. It is pretty much silent on where the water will come from for these extra one million people (if the answer is: “the sky'’ - well that’s not going so well is it) or how public transport will cope, or the roads or anything.
Higher residiential density means more tall apartment buildings in the burbs, and the degree of oppostion to this is already enormous - the government will get pretty tired of fighting for each and every one of these (proposals for Camberwell, Mitcham, Northcote -all have faced mega opposition).
And who are these people who want to live above train stations? Do they exist?
Yes - no one wants Melbourne to spread forever to the north, south-east and west. But even this 2030 plan incorporates scope for a massive increase in the spread, not relief from it.
There is an alternative: Victorian regional development. Boost Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Warrnambool, Traralgon - provide cheap or free land and rates and power as incentives and build decent infrastructure. Make these places more attractive to companies and their workers. The “fast train'’ project has been so badly mishandled that it may never recover - but at some stage genuine fast links to Melbourne and inter-region will need to be built. It will all cost money but it will be less than the cost of shoe-horning a million people into Melbourne.
Put the extra million people where land is cheap and where they will be welcome, as an antedote for regional decline and fall.
6 Responses to “Does anyone support the Melbourne 2030 plan?”
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Nook nook, be very careful. You make perfect, logical,sense to me, but the powers that be, those in power, don’t like to be circumvented.
If you want your ideas heard, and then enacted on, you must plant the idea in the heads of the pollies, and let them believe they thought of these ideas themselves.
Then of course, you will need to wait for an eternity until the selected politician is convinced that the idea he thought he thought of, will be one that is popular.
However, never give up on your dream of logic being the order of the day. Be encouraged, at least one other person thinks like you.
Cheerio
theshadow
Thanks mate. Probably the only hope is that, in the long run, there may be no other option and what I suggest above will be the only course open.
I must say I agree the idea is pretty much the worst one in the history of Melbourne. People like this city because it’s like a really big country town. It’s a city where you can still feel free of the crush and maintain some sort of relationship with the natural world. Various suburbs have already had areas “acquired” for development. I’m recently became aware of one case (can’t remember the suburb) where the council acquired parkland to develop but had intended to preserve various trees and rare specimens in the area. But when the public protested the development the councilor retaliated. Now the whole lot will be bulldozed. Rare plants and all.
So is this what we should expect in the future? “Protest and we’ll crush you.” I think the whole thing stinks. I don’t want my city to be leveled to make way for apartments that will probably end up like the ones in Flemington where they had to bar the windows so people couldn’t jump out of them and where smack flows like water.
My house with it’s large, green backyard shaded by regal, matured eucalypts will be leveled next year to make room for flats. The 2030 plan isn’t just in the minds of the government, it’s under the skin of the citizens themselves.
Regards
Aidan
You are not alone. I think the weight of numbers of people who are against the thrust of this plan will eventually force the State Govt in another direction.
I personally think Melbourne 2030 lacks a lot of commonsense - and a very controlling document for the future. Rural towns are petrified their centres will become semi-urban, with built-up shopping strips and taller buildings. Protect the rural towns, I say. Yes, there needs careful development in inner Melbourne, in terms of higher-density residential areas but there also needs to be a balance and allow people to protect their own backyard from potentially monstrous works. This could kill the atmosphere of a suburb - and that’s why Melbourne 2030 is scary. There’s no doubt that it’s flawed and allows state and local government to thrive, thanks to greedy developers.
You are all forgetting one fundamental fact while spruking this solution.
Rural Victoria is in an even deeper crisis regarding their water supplies than Melbourne is.
Rural Victoria cannot currently support millions more water guzzling residents.
Collectively, I think we are going to have grow a brain and realize that the carrying capacity (re water availability) of Victoria for humans has been reached or more likely exceeded.
As is slowly dawning upon us all, continued ‘growth’ is going to start having some very negative impacts on our life styles that we have become accustomed to.
What the hell is the point of having a plethora of jobs to choose from if none of them pay enough to allow you to comfortably pay your basic bills, if you can’t afford to buy a house to live in or if the taps run dry??????