SOUTHBANK BUILDINGS

Even more apartment buildings going up in Southbank...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

CONSTRUCTION

Yet another apartment building going up in Southbank, just behind the beautiful, historic Boyd Centre. We are rapidly becoming an overdeveloped city with all the attendant misfortunes: Pollution, overcrowding, increased crime, poverty, poor infrastructure, decreased social and community support mechanisms, etc, etc. Melbourne once was said to be the "World's Most Livable City" - alas, nevermore.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the My Corner of the World meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme.

MOONEE PONDS

New high rise apartment buildings in Moonee Ponds. Dame Edna would never have approved!

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme.

OVERDEVELOPMENT

Yet another skyscraper going up in Southbank...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

WINDOW BOX

Now that we are seeing more and more apartments in Melbourne, the large front and back gardens of individual houses of the past are getting less common. The poor geranium is a very undemanding plant and does well with minimum care in window boxes and pots - even in an apartment balcony or window ledge!

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

BUILT IN BRICK

Yet another apartment going up in the neighbourhood. The bricks you seek are behind the hoarding...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

MELBOURNE'S GROWING PAINS

Melbourne's population is presently estimated to be 4.88 million people. The population density of Melbourne is 440 people per square kilometre. Melbourne is booming as far as population is concerned. The population is totally expanding at a quick speed. It has been said that the city grows by 1800 individuals every 7 days. Melbourne is hustling at a quicker rate to rival Sydney as the nation’s biggest city. The city had the biggest population growth contrasted with all the capital urban cities in the nation.

The population of Victoria is expected to hit 10 million people by the 2050s and Melbourne's population will double by 2031, new figures indicate. Population growth will continue to be strong, according to new figures from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the capital will need another 2 million homes to accommodate the growth. The rising trends in births, life expectancy and migration are said to account for the strong population growth.

As the building boom continues and infrastructure lags behind the unchecked growth, our city is becoming overcrowded, noisier, more polluted, more congested and more unsafe (the number of criminal offences recorded in Victoria went up by more than 50,000 last year — an 8 per cent rise in the per-capita crime rate)... Nevertheless, it's still a good place to live and to visit...

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

MODERN LIVING

High-rise accommodation is proliferating in Melbourne at an alarming pace. An easy solution for the increased demand for housing by an unchecked population growth in a city of limited resources and failing infrastructure. Such are modern times and such is the lot of people subjected to modern living conditions...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,

and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,

and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

FLINDERS STREET INCIDENT

Today, at 4.42 pm, a 4-wheel drive vehicle attack on a busy pedestrian crossing in Melbourne’s Flinders Street (at the T-intersection with Elizabeth St) left 19 people in hospital, six of them critically injured. A pre-school-aged child who was injured with severe head trauma is now stable.

Police have announced that they believe this attack was the work of a mentally ill drug addict and it is not being treated as terrorism. The driver is thought to be a mentally ill man with a history of addiction to the drug ice. It is understood he has no known links to extremism and is not known to counter-terrorism authorities.

A second man pictured arrested at the scene was unconnected to the attack. He was video-taping the incident and was arrested because police found three knives in a bag in his possession. No other weapons were found in the offender’s car, the vehicle itself of course being weapon enough in the driver’s control.

In these days right before Christmas there will be many households in our city that will be affected by this horrible act of violence. The families and friends of the victims first and foremost of course, but also the family of the offender who must grieving not only for their child but for all those he injured. Add to them every other rational human being who observes this and similar senseless acts of violence and cannot help but feel revulsion, abhorrence and outrage.

All we Melburnians feel rather numb seeing this is the second incident of this type that has occurred in our city this year. On January 20 earlier this year, a car running wild in the Bourke St mall caused the death of six people and injured 28 others. The driver, Jim Gargasoulas 27 years old was charged but has pleaded “not guilty”, his defence being “mental illness”.

Our city is changing, our world is changing, people are changing and I’m afraid that things are not changing for the better. Melbourne was a beautiful city, its people mostly friendly, courteous and law-abiding. In the last 30 years we have seen Melbourne, The Large Modern City – the Most Livable City in the World slowly becoming Melbourne the Post-Modern Megalopolis: Overcrowded, noisy, congested, riddled with crime, corruption, and home of violence related to drugs, mental illness, homelessness, racial tensions, and the ever-present threat of terrorism hanging above our heads.

We have created a monster by allowing our city to become this. Corporate and individual greed, political expediency, public insouciance and a misguided desire to be a “World City” has brought us here. Now we pay the price. Melbourne you have come of age, now you belong there with all the other megalopoleis of the world. Megalomania deserves its own special reward - the loss of soul. I hope against hope that this incident is the last that we shall see, but logic says otherwise - more such incidents are to follow, I think...

My Melbourne is no longer Fresh, and I can no longer post a Daily beautiful offering in a city that is becoming increasingly more and more dehumanized. I still live here because this is my home and I shall try to find pockets of sanity to insulate myself from the increasing madness of the city. I shall try to still find beauty where I can, and continue to associate myself with people who are rational, open-minded, tolerant, charitable and altruistic. I shall continue to try to change my world for the better in any way I can. It is becoming more and more difficult...

This is the last entry for Melbourne Fresh Daily. Thank you to all the loyal followers and readers who have accompanied me here since 11/11/2011. It’s been quite the ride.

My best wishes to you and your loved ones for a peaceful Christmas and a calmer, better, saner 2018.

TOWARDS THE NORTH

Melbourne's outer northern suburbs are considered to be one of Australia's fastest growing corridors. The high population growth occurring in areas 25-35 km from the city centre in the north continues to drive demand for housing and has resulted in this being one of Melbourne's growth hotspots.

Melbourne's growing northern metropolitan fringe is changing the character of what was a sleepy, bucolic area with acre lots and larger farms into a densely populated suburbia with town centres, schools, health and educational facilities that are servicing the increasing population. Pockets of nature and recreational facilities are being preserved, such as this, the parklands around the Yan Yean Reservoir, which is the oldest of Melbourne's water dams.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

UP, UP & AWAY...

Melbourne is a city that is currently going through an extreme development phase and an ongoing skyscraper boom. Considering the CBD and Southbank, especially, Melbourne looks to become a world-class, mega-tall metropolis. In the near future, Melbourne will compete with cities like Chicago, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo in terms of having a large number of buildings of 200+ metres tall. As the effects of this boom are becoming increasingly visible and the strain on the city's infrastructure is clearly evident, the controversy is raging regarding the benefits and drawbacks of hyper-dense, supertall overdevelopment...

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme.

CONSTRUCTING UP

Melbourne is a city that is currently going through an extreme development phase and an ongoing skyscraper boom. Considering the CBD and Southbank, especially, Melbourne looks to become a world-class, mega-tall metropolis. In the near future, Melbourne will compete with cities like Chicago, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo in terms of having a large number of buildings of 200+ metres tall. As the effects of this boom are becoming increasingly visible and the strain on the city's infrastructure is clearly evident, the controversy is raging regarding the benefits and drawbacks of hyper-dense, supertall overdevelopment with construction going up, Up, UP...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

FLAT TO LET

We are currently experiencing a housing shortage in Victoria with supply unable to keep up with population growth. This is especially true in Melbourne, where booming population is forcing extensive development. People are urged to embrace higher density living if the city is to keep up with demand for new homes.

New data from the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) found that despite record-high levels of housing development, the state had a shortfall of 9,000 new properties in the past two years. It said if that trend continued it would lead to an undersupply in excess of 50,000 houses by 2020...

The homelessness crisis in Melbourne is much worse in the suburbs and on the urban fringe than in the CBD. It's just not as obvious because people are taking shelter in places such as toilet blocks, bushes and cars. Private rentals are expensive, shared accommodation is often full, cheap motels are only a short-term fix and the waiting list for public housing is only getting longer.

Victoria is the fastest growing state in the nation because of the remarkable population growth in its capital. From congested roads to overcrowded public transport, energy, housing affordability and public safety, managing Australia’s most rapid population growth is an extraordinary challenge.

A total of 77 per cent of our state’s population live in Melbourne and about 90 per cent of our annual growth settles in the capital. If we continue as “business as usual”, Victoria by 2051 will see another 3.8 million people in Melbourne but only 690,000 people moving or settling in the rest of state — a pattern that is reflected across much of the country.

Not only is decentralisation important to protecting and conserving the capital’s liveability, it makes economic sense. Essential Economics observed: “It is less costly for government to ­develop the regions than provide for increased infrastructure to manage increased growth in Melbourne. Indeed, it has been estimated that to provide infra­structure to support a 50,000-person population increase in regional Victoria, it would cost $1 billion, compared with $3.1 billion to provide for the same increase in metropolitan Melbourne.”

Victoria has not had a decentralisation agenda since the Hamer Liberal government in the 1970s, and during that period Victoria witnessed 10 consecutive years when the population growth rate in the regions outperformed the capital. Now we are overdeveloping Melbourne, we are overcrowding the city and the increasing density is such that the infrastructure cannot keep up. Regional Victoria is languishing and country towns are experiencing population decreases. Building more and more apartment buildings in the city is not the answer.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

BIG CITY LIFE

Melbourne's population is presently estimated to be 4.88 million people. The population density of Melbourne is 440 people per square kilometre. Melbourne is booming as far as population is concerned. The population is totally expanding at a quick speed. It has been said that the city grew by 1800 individuals for every 7 days. Melbourne is hustling at a quicker rate to rival Sydney as the nation’s biggest city. The city had the biggest population growth contrasted with all the capital urban cities in the nation.

The population of Victoria is expected to hit 10 million people by the 2050s and Melbourne's population will double by 2031, new figures indicate. Population growth will continue to be strong, according to new figures from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the capital will need another 2 million homes to accommodate the growth. The rising trends in births, life expectancy and migration are said to account for the strong population growth.

As the building boom continues and infrastructure lags behind the unchecked growth, our city is becoming overcrowded, noisier, more polluted, more congested and more unsafe (the number of criminal offences recorded in Victoria went up by more than 50,000 last year — an 8 per cent rise in the per-capita crime rate).

The Melbourne I know and love is changing far too rapidly for my liking and I'm afraid this change is for the worse. Governments are becoming more inert, more powerless and seemingly quite unconcerned about the future of our city, while it looks like big business, profiteering and greed set the agenda and drive the change forward. What a pity, for what once was the most liveable city in the world...

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Through my Lens meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

LOSING OUR SOUL

I get worried lately as I see more and more building development eating into the heart and soul of our city. Our population is increasing quite steeply and as more and more people flood into Melbourne, apartment buildings and medium density units are being built as individual houses with their lovely front and back yards are being demolished and "developed". As the population density increases, the traffic and pollution are becoming greater and the already inadequate infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the increasing demands placed on it...

Melbourne is changing rapidly right before our very eyes. All in the name of progress, but underlying it all is big business and profiteering from an artificially created building boom as governments are relaxing the building and development laws. What would have been impossible to build 20 years ago, is now passed quickly through the regulation bodies and piles of concrete boxes are crowded together more and more.

The skyscrapers in the first photo were once only in the CBD. Now more and more high rise developments are mushrooming into existence in the suburbs. Melbourne used to be voted as the "World's Most Livable City", however, I fail to see how it can continue to vie for that title as more and more irrational building development is being allowed, and as our population soars, seriously undermining our standard of living.

Come and visit Melbourne before it is no longer a beautiful metropolis. Hurry!

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

PRESTON MARKET

Preston Market is the second largest market in Melbourne selling fresh produce, clothing and homewares with a variety of restaurants and food stalls; it attracts over 80,000 visitors per week.

Construction on the Preston Market began in October 1969 when Preston Mayor W. K. Larkins drove home the first stake in the site of the former Broadhurst Tannery.    The original investment in the site was $2 million.

The market opened in 1970 and by 1976 the market had grown to include 46 green grocers, 15 delicatessens, 4 fish shops, 4 poultry shops, 19 butchers and a variety of small goods shops including toys, clothes, carpets, plants, and sporting goods.

In 2004 the owners of Preston Market, Centro MCS, sold the property to Salta Properties for $36.75 million.   The new company plans to renovate the site.

On February 27 2017, Darebin council voted to reject an application by Preston Market Developments (owned by Salta Properties and Medich Corporation), to build three residential towers - one of 14 storeys and two of 10 storeys with a total of 300 apartments and ground floor retail outlets - on part of what is currently a market car park on Murray Road.

But the developers have announced they will appeal the decision in VCAT. Salta managing director Sam Tarascio​ said Darebin councillors went against expert advice to the council that the development was consistent with its planning for Preston.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme.

DISAPPEARING VIEW

Why do people who live in high rise apartments complain when their view disappears when other high rise apartments get built in front of them?...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

ROSETIME IN THE SUBURBS

A fine old Edwardian house in Fairfield, an inner Melbourne suburb. Sitting on a sizeable block of land, enough for a decent front and back garden, this type of house is under threat of development... Many such houses have been demolished and in their place anything between 4-6 units have been built, overcrowding the neighbourhoods, increasing noise levels, traffic congestion, pollution and placing increasing demands on already heavily utilised infrastructure.

Let's stop and smell the roses while we still can... These beauties are Hybrid Tea, Rosa 'Pink Peace'. Very fragrant and perfect for cut flowers, as well as being a vigorous and heat resistant garden favourite. Hybridised by Meilland in 1959, an oldie but a goody!

This post is part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Macro Monday meme,
and also part of the Through my Lens meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

BUILDING FRENZY

Rapid expansion in construction and high-rise development in the city’s CBD and inner north threatens to destroy the quality of life and amenity for many local residents alike. With no fewer than 30,000 new residents predicted to live in eight city blocks bounded by Swanston, Victoria, Queen and Lonsdale streets – local resident, architect and urban designer Bruce Echberg has found himself at the “epicentre of the biggest and most rapid skyscraper-building frenzy Melbourne has seen.”

Buying in to one of the first wave of apartment developments in Melbourne in the early days of the Melbourne City Council’s ‘Postcode 3000’ program, Mr. Echberg is now concerned that his apartment “could be rendered uninhabitable by massive and poorly designed residential developments on three sides.” Apart from an oversupply of high-rise construction, one of the key issues comes back to the quality of design and build; with many of these skyscrapers funded by overseas developers and sold to offshore investors, these finer details are often overlooked – at the cost of residents, renters and the local property market.

For these reasons and many more, there should be stricter guidelines and restrictions on minimum standards for apartment developments — because as we’ve seen, previous governments unfortunately approved developments on the ground of “piecemeal – without any regard for the area as a whole.” Source: theage.com.au

This post is part of the Blue Monday meme.
and also part of the Through my Lens meme.