Victoria
Location: MelbourneInner Suburbs - Carlton, Fitzroy & others
Threat: Inappropriate Redevelopment

Significance of Place
The inner suburbs of Melbourne are some of the most intact and significant Victorian-style urban precincts remaining in the world. Established from the 1840s as Melbourne developed, they are integral to the character of Melbourne, and have national and international significance.

Description of Threat
The State government’s ‘Melbourne 2030’ planning strategy report claims that Melbourne’s population will grow by up to one million people over the next 30 years. ‘Melbourne 2030’ attempts to address where and how these extra people will live. It identifies 100 ‘metropolitan activity centres or hubs’ where new suburban development would be focused, supplying work, retail, educational or recreational facilities for communities.

Higher-density housing will be encouraged in the ‘activity centres’, which include much of Carlton and Collingwood (within 400 metres of Lygon Street and Smith Street), Camberwell Junction, Box Hill, Northcote, Elwood, Chapel Street in South Yarra, Brunswick Street and Smith Street in Fitzroy. This threatens the whole of Richmond and the entire South Fitzroy heritage precinct (Melbourne’s first suburb) with obliteration.

If poorly managed, ‘Melbourne 2030’ could encourage outsized speculative development threatening the scale and character of these low-rise 19th century suburbs. Ironically, inner suburban locations outside these precious heritage precincts and far more suitable for new high-rise, are prohibited by ‘Melbourne 2030’, because they are not within an ‘activity centre’!

Action Required
The National Trust calls for a moratorium on developments under ‘Melbourne 2030’ until ‘structure plans’ for siting and height controls of high-rise development in all inner and middle suburbs are in place. A public campaign to publicise the disastrous nature of this policy and to promote the international significance of Melbourne’s Victorian-era architecture is currently being planned and a media conference has been scheduled for 31 August 2003.