[tayser]

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/mo...new-mini-suburbs/story-fn7x8me2-1226413894648

THE central business district has been expanded in the biggest inner city rezoning in the nation's history.

The central city now stretches from Spring St to Williamstown Rd after the Baillieu Government redrew the boundary to include the 240ha Fishermans Bend redevelopment site.

Residents of the new suburbs will have increased rights to object to nightclubs, taverns, brothels and adult bookshops in the area.

Planning Minister Matthew Guy said yesterday that the precinct would eventually house 50,000 people, with 5000 flats worth $1.5 billion expected to be built in the next decade.

This would create 13,500 construction jobs in an area that will add 50 per cent more land to the current CBD comprising the Hoddle grid, Southbank and Docklands.

"This area will be home to high residential towers, modern terraced townhouses, campus-style offices, warehouse lofts, a vertical school, small laneways, local parks, new art galleries and opportunities to work and open a business," he said.

A possible school site is opposite Murphy Reserve on Plummer St, Port Melbourne, while plans are afoot to extend light rail along Williamstown Rd and possibly up Salmon St or Todd Rd to jobs near the Yarra River. Developers will be required to help pay for new public schools and transport links, and the government wants private colleges to move into the precinct.

The new mini-suburbs have already been named - Wirraway, Sandridge, Montague and Lorimer.

Mr Guy will take responsibility for development applications above four storeys, involving more than 60 dwellings, more than 10,000sq m of floor space and worth more than $10 million.

Urban renewal authority Places Victoria will oversee the next 30 years of development.

Montague's structure plan is open for submission and the City of Port Phillip will make a decision to adopt the following or not later in the year.

Stats for Montague:

50ha / 0.5 square kilometres
up to 25,000 living here, 15,000 working there and 13,000 dwellings.

Three neighbourhoods:

- City Road precinct, mainly low-rise / transition from low-rise South Melbourne/Albert Park, ~300 people/ha (30k people/square km)
- 'Southern Neighbourhood' - mid-rise / Euro-small-urban type development, 40m height limits, 20m podiums with 5m setbacks, ~500 people/ha (50k people/square km)
- 'Northern Neighbourhood' - mid to high-rise, height limits of 60m and 100m closer to West Gate, but that's not likely to be set in stone, ~530 people/ha (53k people/square km).

shitty 'concept' from the HUN

better 'concepts' from City of Port Phillip themselves: http://www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/montague-precinct-structure-plan.htm

City Road precinct

Southern precinct

Northern precinct

Given this is only 1/5 of Fisherman's bend is sets a pretty hefty precedent over the next few decades if Port PHillip adopts something like this - as the majority of the Fisherman's Bend area is in Port Phillip... 25k * 5 = 125k living in ~2.5 square kilometres over a 20-30 timeframe, imagine if that was all in the sprawl belt.

Transport relies on the existing light rail lines, but it'll fail given that ~125k people could live in Fisherman's Bend alone along with ~75k people working there (if the same ratios were applied in all the new Fisherman's bend stages) we're going to need a proper heavy rail metro line.

some of my musings re: what could (should?) happen for PT in the area.

___________

The planning scheme change means that Fisherman's Bend, E-Gate and Richmond station are effectively going to be treated like how Southbank, Docklands and the CBD are now - obviously with Montague they want something specific, but it pretty much ends up with the ultimate goal of redeveloping industrial areas to fit a shitload of people living and working in the area.

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Other areas we're yet to see much detail (but outside the scope of the recent announcement) is the South Kensington / Wholesale markets & Arden (to be redeveloped when the Melbourne Metro tunnel is built) areas:

South Kensington area with Footscray CAD in bottom left - just a random concept with no real oompf behind it - well at least not publicly at this stage

only a minor render of the potential station in the Arden / North Melbourne area, but given the context it looks like it'll be something somewhere between the likes of the Southern and Northern neighbourhoods in Montague:

IIRC, a further 20-25k people are expected to live in Arden once it's fully redeveloped after the station is built and the new rail link is operating.

 

[aussiescraperman]

hello Euro-style living with a few australian tallies mixed in!

 

[Locke]

Big windfall if you had some land in that rezoned area I guess.

 

[AndyGM]

Melbourne will become one very dense city once this really starts to kick off.

All of that industrial land around the centre of the city really gives it opportunities that no other Australian city has, as all of the other majors have old heritage residential areas which are harder to redevelop enclosing the CBD.

 

[OZ Rails]

Wow, impressive!

 

[hyperkube]

adding 50% more to the cbd? wow! great that melbourne has so much land to extend the cbd with!

 

[Enrico]

Just a heads up to anyone salivating into keyboard. It's a long term vision so we shouldn't be expecting the same intensity of development seen in Southbank and Docklands.

 

[Grollo]

The montague plan was prepared by the NIMBY Port Phillip Council to try and restrict development as much as they could.

The minister has ignored this plan and wants high scale, high density development for the whole precinct The minister will be responsible for any applications of more than 10,000 square metres in floor area.

 

[Cristovão471]

The Montague plan looks great, what good is high density if there's no soul?

 

[Sky_Is_The_Limit]

Exciting times ahead for Melbourne!

I like the Minister's aggressive approach but I hope the State commits to considerable investment in metro lines, not just extended tram lines. A 50% extension of the CBD needs a lot more than token transport gestures!

What is the opposition's stance? Or are they still licking their wounds?

 

[Uncle Monty]

Exciting times ahead for Melbourne!


What is the opposition's stance? Or are they still licking their wounds?

The opposition's stance is to do what oppositions do - cirticise the government.

What's with Port Phillip's addiction to setbacks? You can throw in Yarra for that matter too. They say they want European style development then do their best to dilute the strong lines of European streetscapes by introducing setbacks everywhere.

 

[Mickeebee]

What's with Port Phillip's addiction to setbacks? You can throw in Yarra for that matter too. They say they want European style development then do their best to dilute the strong lines of European streetscapes by introducing setbacks everywhere.

So true

 

[chopperread]

All those diagrams at the start of the thread are irrelevant now because the Minister has already rezoned the land and provided barely any planning controls that guide development in this precinct.

Developers only need to provide urban context reports that relate to their site only with a planning application. But what detailed design guidelines or plan should they be measured against?? There is none currently! Just a 5 page local policy with broad objectives.

A sham

 

[John_Proctor]

The opposition's stance is to do what oppositions do - cirticise the government.

What's with Port Phillip's addiction to setbacks? You can throw in Yarra for that matter too. They say they want European style development then do their best to dilute the strong lines of European streetscapes by introducing setbacks everywhere.

generally the setbacks are from a certain height up the facacde... in CoM its normally 40m podium then setback, here it is 3 stories then setback. most european cities have buildings of about 4-5 story equivalent as their dominant streetscape layout. so it isn't particularly inconsistent.

You could also agrue they are going for consistent parapet line with the existing heritage aspects of the streets (generally 2 story victorian terrace shops or 3 story pubs/warehouses) and this is consistent with the european 'consistent parapet' rather than necessarily the european height.

 

[city_thing]

They should construct a cut and cover tunnel for public transport now whilst it's still quite feasible. You could run a new tram line along Collins street in the city, have it go down to Docklands (similar to the #48) before diving into a tunnel to cross the river and continue in a south-west direction to service the new areas.

It would certainly add value to the area for land sales. A normal above ground tram line really won't be enough. There's not much capacity left on the bridges that cross the Yarra into the city at all.

 

[Grollo]

It certainly is unprecendented in Australia to have such a vast inner city area opened up for almost unlimited development where "high scale and high density" development is encouraged.

I guess the question is why should Melbourne try and pretend that it is in Europe? Especially when you are talking about development that will be replacing light industrial and warehouse buildings built on a former swamp?

Supertall residential development is now a worldwide trend so why shouldn't Melbourne (where the trend started when Eureka was first proposed) get some more of the action?

 

[Grollo]

The expected density of this area is 21,000 people per sq km.

The densest area in Australia currently is Sydney (C) - East with a density of 8,900 people per sq km.

The urbanised area of Hong Kong Island and Manhattan both have a population density of around 26,500 people per sq km.

 

[MelbourneOnTheRise]

It certainly is unprecendented in Australia to have such a vast inner city area opened up for almost unlimited development where "high scale and high density" development is encouraged.

I guess the question is why should Melbourne try and pretend that it is in Europe? Especially when you are talking about development that will be replacing light industrial and warehouse buildings built on a former swamp?

Supertall residential development is now a worldwide trend so why shouldn't Melbourne (where the trend started when Eureka was first proposed) get some more of the action?

Could not agree more, Mr G. I suppose the faux European densification meme is yet another example of Australians' failure to outgrow our colonial roots (if only we could have pretty mid-rise buildings just like London and Paris!) and embrace our place in the Asian century (HK/Coruscant).

 

[Sky_Is_The_Limit]

The expected density of this area is 21,000 people per sq km.

The densest area in Australia currently is Sydney (C) - East with a density of 8,900 people per sq km.

The urbanised area of Hong Kong Island and Manhattan both have a population density of around 26,500 people per sq km.

I don't think there is much point in taking Fisherman's Bend in Melbourne at 2.4 sq km in its current form and comparing it with an SLA measuring 6 sq km in Sydney. The best comparison would be Fisherman's Bend (50k in 2.4 sq km) with Green Square (additional 40k between 2000 and 2030 in 2.78 sq km).

It's hard to approximate the population of the SCC's definition of Green Square prior to 2000 because 'Green Square' incorporates parts of Alexandria, Beaconsfield, Rosebery, Waterloo and Zetland and the ABS doesn't break data down to that level of detail. So on top of the population (likely to be quite low) of Green Square in 2000, 40k in 2.78 sq km equates to 14.4k/sq km.

Both have the capacity to expand beyond their current boundaries in future. Green Square could have been/could still be downtown to the CBD's uptown...kind of like how Lower Manhattan and Midtown are separated. The current SCC doesn't have the drive or global competitiveness to make this a reality though, unfortunately.

 

[tayser]

The expected density of this area is 21,000 people per sq km.

The densest area in Australia currently is Sydney (C) - East with a density of 8,900 people per sq km.

The urbanised area of Hong Kong Island and Manhattan both have a population density of around 26,500 people per sq km.

Paris - inside the peripherique - had the same population density in 1999.

The 11th arrondissement (Bastille area) had a population density of 40k people per square kilometre in the census of the same year.

__________

what I'd like to see, just in the Lorimer section alone:

full map

Blue: podium / street-wall (like in the East end of Collins St) up to 40-50m, broken up by lanes / other access streets, setbacks 5-10m from street (between the two blue lines along each street), filled with commercial/retail/loft apartments along the street-wall then tower footprints (resi/commercial):
Yellow: Big - 200m+
Purple: medium 150-200m
Red: up to 150m (see North Neighbourhood from Montague Structure plan).
Light pink: up to 60m (see Southern Neighbourhood from Montague Structure plan).
Light orange: up to 3-4 levels (see City Road concept from Montague Structure plan).

fits with what the local councils want - space between towers ~20-30m but just taller towers. Dense streets (See Paris streetview link above), forest of towers of varying heights and would be above the 500 people/ha density level that the higher / 100m height limit proposal in the Montague structure plan has.

CoPP have done a good job of focusing on streets with the podium requirements, they're just being tight / not trying to scare too many people with the 60m and 100m height limits. The state government should force the street/podium form across the whole precinct but allow developers to play with towers the further the sites are away from the existing areas in the south of the precinct as long as they adhere to the podium/street-wall requirements and keeping the towers 20-30m apart.

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