Three million people for Melbourne – bigger than putting a man on the moon?

Melbourne is expected to grow by 3 million people over the next 3 decades to 8 million, around the size of current-day New York. That’s just over 60% growth in the next 30 years.

While that sounds like a lot, and it is, remember that in 1994 Melbourne’s population was 3.2 million, so in the last 30 years we’ve grown at a similar rate – just over 60%.

The difference is that to absorb that population over the last 3 decades, Melbourne has grown outwards, giving us a sprawling urban footprint that makes us one of the biggest by area, but least dense, global cities in the world. This is not sustainable, and has resulted in skyrocketing infrastructure costs, and increasing gaps in opportunity between those living in Melbourne’s inner and outer suburbs. The impacts of a dispersed city versus a more compact one were explored recently by Infrastructure Victoria in a terrific piece of work on urban development scenarios: https://www.infrastructurevictoria.com.au/resources/choosing-victorias-future

Going forward, Melbourne will need to grow upwards, densifying around activity centres and transport hubs, with these areas absorbing the majority of the 800,000 new homes that the Victorian government has foreshadowed in Victoria’s Housing Statement: https://www.vic.gov.au/housing-statement. The government has just released maps of what the first 10 of these identified activity centres might look like and is seeking community feedback on each: Activity Centres - VPA.

Growing up doesn’t mean skyscrapers in every suburb; if we do it well it can be a more gentle densification – well designed, medium density that retains green and open spaces and allows for more affordable and social housing. Done well, it will also result in a greater mix of housing options, so that your children and parents don’t need to move to the other side of the city at each stage of life, allowing families and communities to stay together and invest in their local neighbourhoods. Again, Infrastructure Victoria has done a terrific piece on home choices: https://www.infrastructurevictoria.com.au/resources/our-home-choices-how-more-housing-options-can-make-better-use-of-victorias-infrastructure

How will we absorb such a large number of people and build affordable, high quality homes for them to live in, while maintaining liveability and continuing to combat climate change, in the face of the rising cost of living and State public debt? This is shaping up as one of the biggest challenges of our generation.

Mariana Mazzucato, world leading advocate for a mission-led economy, has pointed out it took 400,000 people to put a man on the moon. I'd argue that achieving our mission - creating a liveable, sustainable, inclusive equitable Melbourne - will take 20 times that number. Because it’s going to take every one of our projected 8 million residents to get on board, to innovate, to collaborate, to accept some tough decisions and to move away, once and for all, from the quarter-acre-block-mentality that just doesn’t work for a city of our size.

Building a Melbourne we can all be proud of is going to take a combined and collegiate effort from us all - from all three tiers of government, universities, the private sector and community. It is going to take a multi-disciplined approach.

As Frans Johannson said in one of my favourite books – The Medici Effect – it was the bringing together of people from a wide range of disciplines that helped forge a new world based on new ideas – what became known as the Renaissance. As a result the city became the epicentre of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. This is what Melbourne needs right now – an explosion of new ideas and a renaissance of sorts.

So I was very encouraged to attend two events this week, one with Melbourne Connect at 澳大利亚墨尔本大学 and the other with the Committee for Melbourne , which brought together people from a range of backgrounds and disciplines to start to tackle our shared challenge and develop a shared vision for what we want from our city. And as Rob Adams AM reminded us this week, that vision has to be bold, optimistic and transformative.

I had five key takeaways from these thought-provoking events:

1. Diversity: Victoria’s local population is growing at well below replacement levels, so the majority of expected growth will come from overseas and interstate migration, which is itself a great sign of Melbourne’s vitality as a talent magnet. This will continue to change the demographics of our city, making it more diverse and more vibrant, but also meaning the city itself will need to adapt. Throw in hybrid working and the nature and cadence of our city 30 years from now will need to look quite different to what it does now. Melbourne already has one of the most multicultural populations on earth, with half of our residents either born overseas or having a parent who was. This provides enormous economic opportunities for Melbourne, especially in economic powerhouses like India, China and South East Asia. BUT we are not doing nearly enough to leverage this enormous asset, partly because this cultural diversity is not reflected in our board rooms, cabinet rooms or the upper echelons of the public service. This also means we run the risk of not involving whole groups from our community in the decisions that will shape our city's future. We need to do more to ensure a diversity of voices are “in the room where it happens” – this continues to be a priority for the Office for Suburban Development.
2. Climate change – On many measures, a more compact city will be better for the environment than a sprawling one. But adding 3 million people cannot help but throw up challenges to sustainability and biodiversity. The building materials required for 800,000 more homes; the added transport emissions if we don’t move more rapidly to EVs and mass public transit; and the need to maintain green and open spaces just to name a few. Professors Dan Hill and Mariana Mazzucato recently wrote a piece on how rethinking housing as a common good would also deliver better planetary outcomes: y2pXIZ6USFuytgt8VGtF (graphassets.com). As we grow, we have to grow within planetary boundaries. Regen Melbourne is leading the discussion we need to have here; check out their work on more holisitic success measures for our city at https://www.regen.melbourne/measuring-what-matters. We also know climate change will have a greater impact on those who can least afford it. Which is why we can’t forget about those living in the outer suburbs, even as we understandably concentrate the lion’s share of new homes in the inner and middle suburbs. The Committee for Melbourne’s latest Benchmarking Report showed that, measured against 20 peer cities, Melbourne went backwards this year on inclusivity and well being. We can’t allow that trend to continue.
3. Liveability – having a quantitative target of 800,000 homes is important – particularly in the face of the current housing crisis. It will also help to keep public servants like me accountable for how we use taxpayers money to accelerate that housing construction (i.e. we need to be more imaginative than just tax breaks for developers). But if the numerical target were coupled with a more qualitative one – like liveability – it could drive more holistic outcomes for communities and drive the kind of collaborative behaviours that we are going to need. If your target is building a lot of houses, this will pave the way for important coalitions of developers, builders, planners and financial institutions. But if your target is increased liveability, the coalitions will broaden to also include community collectives, multicultural organisations, social enterprises, placemakers, think tanks and universities. Place Score founder Kylie Legge wrote recently on this issue: The peril of throwing out liveability in the rush to build more houses - Government News
4. Governance – Melbourne has 31 local councils, a State government whose Ministerial portfolios are traditionally aligned to linear portfolios rather than missions or collective challenges, and a Federal government that has talked a big game on place-based approaches but hasn’t been active in the cities space for over a decade. Establishing purpose-built governance that brings the three tiers of government together, but also creates space for community and the private sector, will be key, right Marcus Spiller ? Governance models must also find a way to incorporate the voice of place itself into the decision making, building on the lessons of COVID that our local surrounds are so critical to our physical and mental health. We should be using this next evolution of Melbourne to maintain and ideally strengthen connections between people and place, so that the unique fabric of each neighbourhood is not lost but instead celebrated. And when it comes to developing governance models for complex systems and connecting community to Country, we need look no further than the wisdom of First Peoples, who have been doing this for 60,000 years. As Ngaio Chalmers reminded us at the Melbourne Connect event, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel - Indigenous systems thinking has all the tools we need here.
5. Community engagement – this is a big one. The degree of change necessary to accommodate 3 million people over 3 decades will inevitably impact every community in one way or another. So co-designing this future with them is critical. As Feyi Akindoyeni told us at the State Library last Tuesday, research shows that the majority of people will in fact accept some densification in their neighbourhood, but only if (i) community is genuinely consulted, (ii) the development includes open space and parks and (iii) it is accompanied by investment into the infrastructure and services that communities need to thrive. This isn’t just roads and train stations; it’s also recreation facilities, community spaces walkable streets and all the other things that go into a liveable 20-minute neighbourhood. If we can bring community into the tent and engage to collaborate and co-design, rather than just engaging to inform, this will lead to better outcomes, drawing on the strengths and insights of local communities, and may also reduce feelings of disempowerment and growing distrust of government. As a public service we need to engage in story telling, both to combat the disinformation that Ika Trijsburg highlighted at the Melbourne Connect event, but also for all the positive reasons that Thea Snow has so well articulated in her piece: https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/storytelling-for-systems-change-from-listening-to-collective-sensemaking-b3398e13ab30.

The slide that tops this article, shared by Dr Tim Moonen at the Committee for Melbourne event, is a very succinct picture of the factors that drive successful cities and highlights the importance of coalitions and building shared purpose.

I’ve always been a believer that the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity. Let’s not be sitting here in 30 years complaining that it should have been done better. Lean in. Co-design the innovative solutions we need. Have your say in Melbourne and Victoria’s future: https://engage.vic.gov.au/developing-a-new-plan-for-Victoria

Tim Williams Mark Melvin Dr Joseph Correnza Kaj Lofgren Rebecca Scott, OAM Evan Counsel Ludo Campbell-Reid Hon DINZ Rushda Halith Lucinda Hartley David Sinn Damian Dewar Justin Burney. GAICD Megan Vassarotti Victor Perton Leanne Edwards Paul Guerra Lauren Johnson Dr Caitlin Morrissey Nick Decker Georgie Smith MEM Bronwen Clark Toby Kent Frances Martin Jessica Strah Claudia Garcia ?? Lisa Leong Ed Steane Rohini Kappadath