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Introduction >
Focus on Melbourne > How
we were
How we were
Surprising change can take place in the short time
span of 30 years. In metropolitan Melbourne in 1972, many of the
areas now under investigation for Melbourne 2030 were quite
different:
- housing - someone wanting to
live on the city fringe could buy a house on one of the new estates
in Doncaster or Glen Waverley, where long-established orchards
were being cleared and their land subdivided; the Housing Commission
still planned what it called slum clearance in many areas that
today are renovated as desirable parts of the cities of Yarra,
Port Phillip and Melbourne; cattle were sold in the Newmarket
saleyards, now an upmarket housing estate
- transport - public transport
was fragmented and in decline – people travelled on ‘red
rattler’ trains and trams built prior to the First World
War, and the Underground Loop was still just a plan; the roads
division of the MMBW (and, later, the Country Roads Board) had
plans for 494 kilometres of freeways criss-crossing metropolitan
Melbourne – to date, 225 kilometres have been built
- health and education - all metropolitan
Melbourne’s major hospitals were in Central Melbourne or
close to it; the ring of inner-suburban Victorian-era primary
schools (many now sold for development) was still educating thousands
of children
- environment - the first of the
MMBW’s metropolitan parks was being established and the Environment
Protection Authority (EPA) was set up, but more than a decade
would pass before the Age’s ‘Give the Yarra a Go’
campaign led to a new approach for urban waterways
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