This is the second in what I see as a series of opinion pieces written for the Melbourne broadsheet, The Age, but rejected by the paper. The first on the Suburban Rail Loop can be found here. This piece is on the importance of an abundance of housing including good design – that “character” doesn’t need to protected, it needs to be advanced.
Despite my day job being in foreign affairs, and here on this Substack I write more philosophical pieces, a large percentage of my time is actually spent thinking about urban planning in Melbourne. I don’t claim to be an expert on urbanism, but I got ideas and desperately want to write about them. And, of course, urban design is foreign affairs and political philosophy. A city’s soft power is essential to the primary purpose of cities – attracting and facilitating talent, and the way this talent agglomerates, mixes, and morphs is vital to the capabilities of both individuals and nations.
This is why I spend a lot of time thinking about urbanism. It’s the platform from which everything else important flows. So it is definitely in my wheelhouse, even if practitioners in the field may disagree.
The other component of me writing this piece is my war against The Age’s Opinion page (a war they may not realise they are in).
The Age’s Opinion page – to be polite – isn’t what it should be, or what the city deserves. It’s not interested in big ideas and good writing. It embodies what I see an innate provincialism and, for want of a better word, the dingleberryness within many of the key institutions of the city and the state. Also the fretting. My god, the fretting is relentless. It’s fucking embarrassing.
So the idea behind my imaginary war is to write the kind of pieces that I think The Age should be publishing. Knowing full well they never will. But my thinking is that if I keep sending them this style of piece it may inspire them to think a little more about what an opinion page in a large city should publish. Maybe someone at paper will realise that a city of 5.5 million people (and growing rapidly) might actually need a daily forum for serious ideas about the city. And that as Melbourne’s sole broadsheet this is their role.
This might be overstating any influence an email quickly dispensed to the bin may have (probably little to none), but it’s an amusing little exercise for me nonetheless.
So this is the piece I wrote:
The Victorian government’s recent release of its new designated higher density activity zones has received significant pushback by those wishing to “protect neighbourhood character.” Of course, this argument is often used as a disguise for people wanting to protect their property values. However, what if we took the idea seriously? What if Melbourne should be actively thinking about its character? What if good design was just as important to the city as increasing housing supply?
Australians are, by nature, an aesthetically disinterested people. Our national disposition is one of practicality over polish – if something functions well enough then we are satisfied. To waste time and resources on design is not only inefficient it is also seen as a bit pretentious and suspicious.
Yet this disposition is undermining Melbourne’s need to find its urban comparative advantage. Lacking natural beauty, Melbourne must compensate with a focus on man-made style. Yet currently there is a failure with the Victorian government to think about this style strategically. An inability to understand the soft power of urban environments, an inability to have a sophisticated understanding of the city’s culture, and how this should be reflected in both our new buildings and urban infrastructure.
Travel to cities of great urban beauty around the world and it's the aesthetic consistency of a neighbourhood that makes them compelling. Cities like Paris and Copenhagen have understood this and new buildings are designed with their surrounds and maintenance of their cultural image in mind. Melbourne is failing to implement its new buildings in this way.
Catch the 86 tram up High St from Northcote to Thornbury, or the 6 along Lygon St in East Brunswick, and you’ll see a series of apartment blocks built with no attention paid to existing character, and no understanding of local culture. Just a hotch-potch of random architectural styles, and plenty with no style at all.
Several of the “Gold Coast” style buildings in the Docklands and Port Melbourne are also at odds with the kind of city Melbourne is. There’s a laziness here of trying to conform to the “fun in the sun” culture of the northern states. It’s not who we are, and it’s not terrain that we can compete on anyway. We need to embrace our geographic conditions and not rely on cliché Australian themes.
This laziness extends beyond new buildings and into other areas of urban infrastructure. Melbourne inarguably has the world’s ugliest trains and trams. Horrible silhouettes, awful colour schemes and deeply embarrassing seat moquettes. As the city with the world’s largest tram network, the Victorian government should see our trams as a major strategic asset. Yet save for the lone W Class trundling around the city circle, none of our current fleet are in any way compelling.
That no care or consideration is paid to what should be a very easy win for Melbourne is indicative of the broader problem. This how urban design can be used to infuse confidence and aspiration into the city’s daily life. This is how we want Melburnians to feel when they step out of their front doors. How we use our visual landscape and urban infrastructure to animate pride in the city, create a distinct identity for ourselves, and to foster bold new ideas for our future.
For this, neighbourhoods with character are important. But this doesn't mean freezing them in time. Nor does it mean forgoing the essential density that the city needs. The solution to all this – and to hopefully calm to those suspicious of the government’s new activity centres – is not complicated. It may simply be the humble brick.
Brick is timeless and cool. It has a restrained sophistication with a little industrial grit that represents Melbourne well. It looks the part through Melbourne’s grey, wet, winters, yet equally provides style and grace to alfresco cafés and beer gardens in the warmer months. Brick can blend harmoniously with the city’s Victorian-era architecture. Prefabrication can now make brick cost-effective too. Some architects and developers are starting to understand this, but it needs more official encouragement.
Melbourne is within a period of significant growth. To be a city of opportunity and ambition this should be a positive, but unfortunately it is eliciting a lot of fretting instead. To calm people’s anxieties we need to allow them to see the positivity in this growth. This makes good design not just about Melbourne’s soft power and identity, but vital to the social licence for the city’s growth. To provide people with something pleasing to observe with their own eyeballs that gives them confidence that change isn’t a threat.