Melbourne 2030
Download high-res cover
Publication Date: 20 March 2005
RRP: $34.95
ISBN: 9780975747506
Format: Paperback
Size: 165mm x 245mm
Pages: 126
Category: Uncategorised

Melbourne 2030

Planning Rhetoric Versus Urban Reality

Bob Birrell, Kevin O’Connor, Virginia Rapson and Ernest Healy

Out of stock

Open Access

The ‘Melbourne 2030’ plan is the Victorian Government’s blueprint for the accommodation of an additional one million people in Melbourne by the year 2030. The plan seeks to change the shape of Melbourne radically. The vision is of a compact city in which growth will be concentrated in existing commercial centres (activity centres). Notwithstanding this fundamental departure from the low density pattern of the past, it is claimed that Melbourne’s famed ‘liveability’ will be preserved.

This book explores:

  • the intellectual origins of the plan;
  • demographic assumptions behind the plan;
  • the mode of implementation;
  • the likely impact on the built environment;
  • environmental and social consequences;
  • heritage outcomes; and
  • alternative planning options.

It also critically examines assumptions about the projected demand for higher density housing, and argues that the plan’s ‘compact city’ vision is unlikely to be achieved because it fails to come to grips with the economic and demographic realities facing Melbourne.

Bob Birrell

Bob Birrell is Reader in Sociology and Director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University. He is the joint editor of the quarterly demographic journal People and Place, published by the Centre. He was a member...

Read More

Kevin O’Connor

Kevin O’Connor is an economic geographer and Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on understanding economic systems and their impacts on cities and regions, and he has published widely in international and Australian journals. He...

Read More

Virginia Rapson

Virginia Rapson is Research Manager for the Centre for Population and Urban Research. She has long experience with the preparation of indicators of Melbourne’s development through her role in the serial publication Monitoring Melbourne. She is also an expert in...

Read More

Ernest Healy

Ernest Healy is Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University. He has extensive experience as an analyst of urban issues, including as the principal researcher on a major AHURI-funded project ‘Housing and Community in...

Read More