Gday

My mate was in a chopper this weekend and got a few happy snaps of melbourne and docklands

Its great to see Eureka dominating the Skyline ! And Docklands is coming along well !

Enjoy ! :rock:

Lozza :lock:

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n19/wian_ian/melbourneSkyline7.jpg

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n19/wian_ian/melbourneSkyline6.jpg

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n19/wian_ian/Docklands29.jpg

wicked as pics...yarra lookin' nice and blue!
such a happening city...even from 1000 feet!

Damn the camera caught the rotor blade.

Nice pics.

The city looks nice enough and there has been a dramatic improvment in the skyline since 2000. Melbourne needs to continue to move in the direction of sustainable urban renewal but at the same time we need to add more density to in the CBD skyline.

I for the life of me cannot understand the Swanston Street Gap, nor can I understand the concept of closing Swanston Street to through traffic. I still believe that Swanston St is a hole albeit a better hole than it was in 1990. The shops are of cheap quality, and the shameful thing about it is that most tourists actually walk up Swanston Street contrary to popular belief that they walk up Collins, which would be a much more impressive and pleasurable walk. Swanston Street is a blight/pimple on Melbourne's improving image, the lack lustre approach to fixing the facades of the buildings, increasing rents and trying to improve the shops that line the street in my opinion is dissapointing. It is one of the main if the the MAIN spine of Melbourne and in my opinion is actually the worst street in the CBD. Through traffic along with the trams and the increased pedestrian traffic all add to a city vibe. Granted we do not want heavy vehicles cutting through the CBD aka King Street, but a little more vibrance is required in that part of town. I work at the Brunetti in the city square and I have many tourists that come from both interstate and overseas who stop for a coffee there and often remark that Melbourne seems quiet and like a large country town. This impression is based soley on Swanston Street and its vibe and appearance. These tourist often do not go off the beaten track into our laneways or smaller streets nor do the often venture to the denser parts of the CBD. Adding to this is that most tourist tours depart from outside the city square and it is here where the tourists congregate.

To me some form of gentrification needs to occur to futher inhance the cultural spine, add value and class to the city of Melbourne and give a true impression of Melbourne not one that in my eyes contradicts in many ways the vibrance, busy lifestyle and intimate spaces that make Melbourne so great.

Rant over...

Sorry to hijack the thread but that pic of the Swanston Gap got me fired up.

yeah I'm not a fan of the gap either. I like New York style density. Towers, towers, towers and nothing else.

Totally agree with the comments on swanston street mic. I have an interview for the City of Melbourne in a few weeks and if they ask me questions regarding what needs to be done in the city that would be close to the top. George st in Sydney is even worse but at the same time tourists aren't drawn to the road unless they catch the train to Central Station.

The top of end swanston street I think is taking care of itself and is much better than the bottom end. Why zoning permits allow an adult shop on swanston street is beyond me.

I see no reason why the swanston street bald patch will remain as it is in the future. Hopefully 150+ towers change [in a positive way] the street scape of swanston aswell. There are a few exceptions to it though.

i think its good having a low area such as the "swanson st gap". Cities need them even NYC has them.The Greenwich village area between Lower Manhattan and ESB is a low area. gives character to the city. as for density, it will come. takes many years.

To those who say they don't like the gap, imagne walking up Swanston Street doing a spot of shopping with no sun. It would be horrible.

To those who say they don't like the gap, imagne walking up Swanston Street doing a spot of shopping with no sun. It would be horrible.

Well considering when you shop on swanston street you are mostly under cover anyway (unlike the top of collins) I don't think it would be much of an issue. I don't particularly care whether the gap stays or goes but I just feel the majority of stores and food outlets on swanston are very below par compared to the rest of the city. Every city has a street like this but swanston street is our main street and geographical heart which is fully exposed to tourists and locals alike.

To those who say they don't like the gap, imagne walking up Swanston Street doing a spot of shopping with no sun. It would be horrible.

What sun?? I didnt know the sun penetrated all the awnings? It seems to me humans have done their best to shield the sun from those walking along Swanston Street anyway.

It looks like a country town in Ohio. People say that Melbourne is the Chicago of the Antipodes. Lets get real here. Chicago does not have rundown avenues such as Swanston Street. The buildings are rundown, yes there are several of great heritage value, but there are also several of no hertitage value at all. The quality of the stores are an embarassment, $2 dollar shops, Club X, several low price discount stores. Now tell me you are not defending this?

The argument about the sun is unfounded. Having walked Queen Street, many other North-west/South-west facing streets the sun does strike all of them at midday-2pm due to the position and layout of the Hoddle Grid. Swanston Street is not up to world standards, it is run down, and an embarassment. It is far from a showcase avenue and that picture of Melbourne is also indicative of the lack of density in the Central Business District and the non-global appearance of the Melbourne CBD.

Melbourne City Planners need to rethink the planning schemes surrounding Swanston Street. I am by no means saying that 150m towers should be built along the street, but even some nice gentrification such as the QV development does a hell of a lot in improving street frontages, connectivity with the urban layout and the human building scale ratio. The retention and empahsis of existing heritage buildings along with the restoration of some of the run down neglected bulidings lining the street will also enhance Swanston Street as a key spine for Melbourne.

Me as a student can see these things, why cant planners see this? Its a question for the ages isnt it?

The quality of the stores are an embarassment, $2 dollar shops, Club X, several low price discount stores. Now tell me you are not defending this?We've already got a place for people with lots of money and no interest in sex - it's called Collins St.

Swanston St is scummy and beautiful, and having it smack (no pun intended) bang in the middle of the city is one of those things that helps us to be Melbourne and not some sanitised international metropolis.

I have already made my views pretty clear on swanston street.

I think swanston is summed by what is happening to the 'Nicholas Building.' Always been a fan of the building but from walking on the foot path with the awnings and the plethora of abominable shops (el cheapo books, tacky souvenirs etc) you could mistake for just another highrise. If you stripped away the awnings and opened up the entrance it would make a massive difference and add to the bottom end of swanston street.

We've already got a place for people with lots of money and no interest in sex - it's called Collins St.

Swanston St is scummy and beautiful, and having it smack (no pun intended) bang in the middle of the city is one of those things that helps us to be Melbourne and not some sanitised international metropolis.

I now understand other interstate forumers. You are all so one eyed. You dont even leave room for perhaps a thought, or even a moment of pensivness about what could be done to improve the street. Lets hear your opinions. Swanston Street is not at its best, it could be a hell of a lot better. What do you other Melbourne forumers who I assume work in the planning/architecture and development industries think should/could be done to improve Melbourne's main spine?



http://static.flickr.com/84/278657797_a505e27667_o.jpghttp://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n19/wian_ian/melbourneSkyline7.jpg

I now understand other interstate forumers. You are all so one eyed. You dont even leave room for perhaps a thought, or even a moment of pensivness about what could be done to improve the street. Lets hear your opinions. Swanston Street is not at its best, it could be a hell of a lot better.Mate, I'm a local. I bet I live closer to SS than you do. As I said, SS is scummy and beautiful. Getting rid of shops that attract poor people doesn't improve a street, it just makes it more elitist.

Mate, I'm a local. I bet I live closer to SS than you do. As I said, SS is scummy and beautiful. Getting rid of shops that attract poor people doesn't improve a street, it just makes it more elitist.

So the drunk and homeless near St Pauls add character to Melbourne, give the right impression to passers by?

Those drunk and homeless are people like you and me

Edit: on a bad night, sometimes one of them might be me

Edit edit: might be you one day too, if life doesn't go as planned

I go to RMIT so I'm constantly around Swanston st and I'd cry if they put traffic down it again. It's improved *so* much in the years I've been there. I mean what on earth is wrong with this?
http://www.melbournephotos.net.au/images/2005-07-18%20Melbourne%20-%20The%20City%20On%20A%20Sunny%20Winters%20Day/IMG_6807.jpg

What a scummy place.
http://www.melbournephotos.net.au/images/2006-09-21%20Melbourne%20-%20Collins%20St/IMG_9160.jpg

Swanston Street is fine.... it's not great, but then Collins IS, so it doesn't need to be. London has Regent Street, which is gorgeous, and it intersects with Oxford Street, which is hideous - and, in my opinion - far worse than Swanston. So even great global cities often don't look so great or global.
That said, though, I think there's something going wrong when it's taken nearly 20 years and they still haven't managed to get rid of the down-and-out shops. Quality tenants DO matter - all this touchy-feely PC stuff is no excuse for the tatt that lines SS.
And, in my opinion, nothing that Melbourne does will stop it looking like a country town as long as the awnings (on all the streets - particularly Bourke St. mall) are still there. Who is it that wants them kept as they are anyway? The council? The ones on Flinders Street Station also need to come down.

Actually Swanton Street looks a hell of lot better now that those trees have grown. It used to be so bare looking. I think it will improve even further with time but those shops along it won't change overnight. Maybe more residental along it will liven it up more and smartin' it up some. Like Docklands its a work in progress.

Oh well perhaps it is only me who sees that further improvment is required. I hope that one day after finishing my degree I can perhaps work from the MCC and do somthing about that street. Like I have said it was worse, it is now better, but it still remains a bad street. A few trees have done alot, but there is more work to be done, it does not have a good vibe, and I have heard that from residents and tourists alike and I would have to say I agree. After having travelled extensivley in the past year I have been able to look more objectivley upon Melbourne. We do live in an amazing place, but it is still a work in progress, underconstruction if you will. By 2030 perhaps it will be a better, larger more in your face place, at the moment for me Swanston Street is contradictory to Melbourne's progress, advancement, urban renewal movement, and does not give the impression of a progressive, booming city, but rather gives a more Adelaidesque feeling to the city.

End rant.

Awnings are only good when there's something active on them. That little uni bar on the corner of Elziabeth and Flinders Lane is a great people watching spot and I noticed there's another new one on Queen Street the other day.... old RACV building's being converted with bars exposed to the street even higher. Good friday arvo drinks spot right in the heart of the west end.

In the late 1980s, the Victorian government and Melbourne City Council decided to closed Swanston St to traffic and rolled out grass for a weekend festival. The greening of the street was the first chapter in the controversial life of the Melbourne 's Clayton Mall - the mall you have when you are not having a mall.

Swanston St is the only pedestrian mall in the world where you can be booked for jaywalking. It has been the subject of a near two-decade debate on the merits of closing the street to traffic. The city's Lord Mayor, John So, came to office with a team pledging to reopen Swanston St to traffic and, later, to reopen it at night, which has since occured with general traffic allowed in Swanston Street between 7pm and 7am in a bid to revitalise Swanston Street after hours.

The mall remains closed, but functions more as a traffic control device than a pedestrian precinct. As a result, Swanston St remains a ragged collection of retail and fast food tenancies, low on vacancies but far from the showcase retail uses one might expect of a precinct linking Collins and Bourke Sts and boasting the Town Hall, St Pauls and Federation Square.

Swanston St was one of the last major malls established in Australia. Most of the country's pedestrian malls were constructed in the 1970s and 1980s in what now seems to have been more of a fad of urban planning than a move to revitalise shopping strips.

Indeed, most pedestrian malls in Australia were, like Swanston St, designed with a stronger focus on traffic management than on creating thriving retail and entertainment activity centres.

Swanston St was built in the 1990s, more than a decade after Melbourne opened the Bourke St Mall, another precinct with a Clayton's touch, given that unsuspecting pedestrians can be rudely interrupted by trams ploughing through.

Melbourne City Council has recently invested in an upgrade of the Bourke St Mall as part of a city facelift ahead of the March 2006 Commonwealth Games.

The concept for the mall revamp was devised by Danish architect Jan Gehl, who has advised the council on its pedestrianisation plans for the CBD. The $5.5 million revamp includes new paving, lighting and street furniture, public art and tree plantings for the one-block mall.

The Bourke St Mall is relatively successful. The trams that threaten pedestrians do provide the compensation that they bring people to the space, but the real driver of the mall is the strong retail frontage that includes Myer, David Jones, Centrepoint, The Walk and GPO. Unlike Swanston St , there has never been any debate about reopening Bourke St. Melbourne City Council is now widening the footpaths on the street between Swanston and Russell Sts in another move to dissuade motorists from coming into the city.

But around Australia debate on the merits of malls and the prospect of reopening some of them to traffic is raging.

Townsville in Queensland and Ballarat in Victoria both generated heated debates on the merits of retaining malls when local councils were faced with the prospect of costly upgrades to improve safety and amenity.

Interestingly, retailers who fought to stop the spread of malls around Australia are usually most resistant to the reopening of streets. Their fears then and now are effectively the same - the fear that change to the street, then by eliminating traffic and parking, and now by altering established pedestrian behaviour, will have an adverse impact on business.

In some other areas, however, retailers and other businesses are concerned that pedestrian malls are a magnet for vandalism and anti-social behaviour, which keeps customers away and example of what often occurs along Melbourne's Swanston Street mall, non-mall.

Source:
http://www.insideretailing.com.au/V2/Default.aspx?tabid=695

boo frikking hoo.

If K&K, Lin & Phat or Mamma & Papa Giuseppe want to drive their Felcens & 'Dores, Alfas and Riceburners from Fornbury, Scumshine, Franga & Nazza Wazza down Swanston St then they can just keep on praying for that day, and the vast majority of the rest of us who spend time in the city on a frequent basis will get on with our lives.

Removing the awnings from Swanston St and building on top of them on Elizabeth St is the way to go IMO.

boo frikking hoo.

If K&K, Lin & Phat or Mamma & Papa Giuseppe want to drive their Felcens & 'Dores, Alfas and Riceburners from Fornbury, Scumshine, Franga & Nazza Wazza down Swanston St then they can just keep on praying for that day, and the vast majority of the rest of us who spend time in the city on a frequent basis will get on with our lives.

Removing the awnings from Swanston St and building on top of them on Elizabeth St is the way to go IMO.

Collins Street along with most other CBD streets are worse for ware I suppose due to the traffic. I am by no means suggesting that mass traffic aka Hoddle street should be allowed along Swanston Street, all I was stating is that in its current form what is Swanston Street??

Is it a walk?
Is it a street?
Is it a mall?

What is it? I myself have been fined for jaywalking on Swanston Street on my way to Melbourne Uni, but according to the officer it is a Street, unbeknown to me, the innocent individual thinking it was a walk. It needs an identity before it can be fixed.

Swanston Street esp the western side from Flinders to Bourke Streets suffers because nobody is actually going to do business there as it is the original through way from FSS to the main streets like Collins and Bourke and thats one of the reasons why its dominated by cheap food outlets and junk shops.
If you take the awnings away the place will become unbearable in the summer months and they also afford great protection to pedestrians on rainy winter days - they mightnt look great but are there for a reason!

Swanston Street esp the western side from Flinders to Bourke Streets suffers because nobody is actually going to do business there as it is the original through way from FSS to the main streets like Collins and Bourke and thats one of the reasons why its dominated by cheap food outlets and junk shops.
If you take the awnings away the place will become unbearable in the summer months and they also afford great protection to pedestrians on rainy winter days - they mightnt look great but are there for a reason!

But arent there trees along Swanston Street. I dont find Collins Street at all unbreable under the trees during summer....honeslty all these arguments are defending Swanston Street.

What can we do to improve it?

Only tourists (or irregular visitors) could ever be troubled by trams along Bourke St Mall.

Swanston St is for all purposes just a street in my (a pedestrian's) point of view though. It doesn't resemble a mall and there is a fair amount of traffic going down the street. But changing the name won't do anything, because a rose (or otherwise) by any other name will still smell (or not) as sweet.

But arent there trees along Swanston Street. I dont find Collins Street at all unbreable under the trees during summer....honeslty all these arguments are defending Swanston Street.

What can we do to improve it?
Im not defending the sleazy side of Swanston but just pointing out some of the historical reasons.
BTW Collins and Bourke run east/west and dont cop the direct sun on them in the same way as the north /south Swanston does.

IMO Collins St works well especially with new tram superstops that narrow the road, further slowing down traffic.

However Swanston St has always been an issue since its inception (remember Melbourne Square being a flop, now replaced by Fed Square). Its is more lively now with more city residents and QV, but still lacks some soul and vibe.

I think it should be a mall, exactly like Bourke St Mall, between colins & up to Melbourne Central.

But arent there trees along Swanston Street. I dont find Collins Street at all unbreable under the trees during summer....honeslty all these arguments are defending Swanston Street.

I think a mjor difference is the streets are oriented differenlty. Collins is sheltered by the buildings, however Swantson has:

1) Lower buildings which don't block as much sun, and..
2) The street is north south, during the middle part of the day the sun shines straight down the street, regardless of the trees. It's good on a crappy day because you can walk along and stay in the sun and warm yourself yp a bit.

Only tourists (or irregular visitors) could ever be troubled by trams along Bourke St Mall.

Swanston St is for all purposes just a street in my (a pedestrian's) point of view though. It doesn't resemble a mall and there is a fair amount of traffic going down the street. But changing the name won't do anything, because a rose (or otherwise) by any other name will still smell (or not) as sweet.

Agree. Bourke Street Mall is like 30 metres wide or something, and trams take up maybe a quarter of it down the middle. Anyone who finds the trams in the way need to simply watch where they are walking, or find somewhere more conducive to loitering.

Swanston feels to me like a street too. Firstly because it looks like a street, ie with road markings and traffic lights etc, and secondly because its filled with buses, taxis, delivery trucks, etc. I would rather it was a proper mall, for at least part of the way.

gday

i suppose the main reason for these super tram stops is to actually encourage people to use public transport and to discourage cars in the cbd, which isnt a bad thing i suppose....

cheers

lozza

you're learning lozz ;)

But Queen Street is not unbearable to walk down, nor is William or Russell, the trees help greatly. If the trees remain but the awnings removed would that be such a bad thing? I think not.

As for Melbourne's Urban feel, it may be more european than the other metropolis' in Australia, the laneways are fantastic, but the Grid street pattern and especially Swanston St is very North American in nature. Wide, flat street. It is my opinion. As much as we are European, we are also very American, the levels of density acheived in Europe are very very very very far from the density we experience here in Melbourne. Increasing the density, inner city living and increasing public transport use is the way to go, but you just cant beat the buzz of entering a big city like London, Paris or New York, which I had the pleasure of visiting just this past July. Absolutely amazing, and my first thought was: " Now this is a city..."

But Queen Street is not unbearable to walk down, nor is William or Russell, the trees help greatly. If the trees remain but the awnings removed would that be such a bad thing? I think not.

I agree.

As for Melbourne's Urban feel, it may be more european than the other metropolis' in Australia, the laneways are fantastic, but the Grid street pattern and especially Swanston St is very North American in nature.

http://thehoddlegrid.net/dump/victorianglasgow.jpg

Wide, flat street.

http://thehoddlegrid.net/dump/georgianedinburgh.jpg

Are Glasgow & Edinburgh less European for having grid patterns in their central cores? No

As much as we are European, we are also very American, the levels of density acheived in Europe are very very very very far from the density we experience here in Melbourne.

Density or lack thereof does not directly equal 'good' (or bad) urbanity.

Increasing the density, inner city living and increasing public transport use is the way to go, but you just cant beat the buzz of entering a big city like London, Paris or New York, which I had the pleasure of visiting just this past July.

Absolutely amazing, and my first thought was: " Now this is a city..."

I had the same reaction and said the same thing when I visited Dubrovnik this past July too, and it's no Paris, Londres or Nouvelle York scale-wise - but it's no less impressive, and it doesn't have to have that generic 'wow-factor' of a big foreign city you've succumbed to to be that way, just like Melbourne.

The French expression vive la différence comes to mind.