THE INNER SUBURBS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Seminar Proceedings Wednesday, 8th November, 1978

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THE INNER SUBURBS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Seminar proceedings

World Town Planning Day

Wednesday, 8th November, 1978

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Prince Phillip Theatre, University of Melbourne

il . ' 7,11. 4099 1 .1658679 . " 451 MEL i The Inner suburbs - l copy 2 past, present and future : : seminar proceedings, World Town Planning Day, Wednesday 8th November 1978, Prince ( ·~~~~~--~~~~-~-· _) •. Sponsored by:

Conunittee for Urban Action .• National Trust of Australia (Victoria) Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Victorian Chapter) Royal Australian Planning Institute (Victorian Division) Town and Country Planning Association Town and Country Planning Board

MINISTRY FOR PLANNING ANO ENVIRONMENT LIBRARY ~~~- ~- ·------World Town Planning Day is celebrated internationally on 8th November to draw attention to the aims, objectives and progress of planning.

The International Organisation for World Town Planning Day was founded in 1949 by the late Professor Carlos Maria della Paolera of the University of Buenos Aires. Each year one country is nominated as the focus. Nearly thirty countries from four continents have been nominated since 1949. World-wide celebrations are held on that day to advance public and professional interest in planning locally and abroad.

To mark,. World Town Planning Day in 1978, the Committee for Urban Action, the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Victorian Chapter), the Royal Australian Planning Institute (Victorian Division), the Town and Country Planning Association and the Town and Country •Planning Board organised a seminar on "The Inner Suburbs - Past,Present and Future", the third in a series of seminars on aspects of planning and development which are considered of community interest.

J For the purpose of this seminar, the inner suburbs are taken as being the central core of municipalities defined in the position statement issued by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works in April 1977, viz. the Cities of Collingwood, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Port Melbourne, Prahran, Richmond, St. Kilda and South Melbourne.

To many people, the inner suburbs represent an important part of the history of the development of Melbourne: they characterize the intermixture of different social and cultural groups and provide a dramatic example of the desirability of inner as opposed to outer suburban living.

To others, they provide a series of contrasts in urban living and it is the issues arising from these apparent contradictions which are the subject of the seminar. Because of this, traditional physical planning techniques and approaches to the handling of competing demands, e.g. conservation and redevelopment, public and private transport and facilities, are unlikely to be appropriate.

It is the hope of the organisers that the papers and discussions at the seminar will make a significant contribution to the knowledge of the inner suburbs and assist both the authorities and residents in their future planning and m~nagement. CONTENTS

Chairman: Mr Max Barr, Past ·President, Royal Australian Planning Institute (Victorian Division}

Chairman'· s introduction

Opening address

The Rt. Hon. the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Cr. Irvin Rockman.

The Role of the Inner Suburbs

Dr Graeme Davison, Urban Historian and Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Melbourne.

A Personal View

Mrs Anne Latreille, Columnist.

Discussion

Management of the Inner Suburbs

Cr. Andrew Mccutcheon, Collingwood City Council; Comnri.ssioner, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works.

Government Policy on the Inner Suburbs

The Hon. A. J. Hunt, M.L.C., Minister for Planning; Minister for Local Government. ·

Economic Patterns and Alternatives

Dr. Michael Jones, Director, Australian Centre for Local Government Studies, Canberra College of Advanced Education.

Discussion

Movement in the Inner Suburbs

Mr. William Taylor, Deputy Supervising Engineer, Transport Planning Division, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works.

Fiscal. Policies

Mr· Terry Cocks, Principal, A. T. Cocks and Associates, Property Consultants.

The Stance of Local Government

Mr. David Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Local Government, Department of Administrative Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

What to do about the Inner Suburbs

Dr. Miles Lewis, Department of Architecture, University of Melbourne. Discussion

Sununing up '" Mr Keith Dunstan, Author .and Columnist.

Discussion

Chairman's conclusion

Resolutions

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J .• , CHAIRMAN'S INTRODUCTION

Mr Max Barr

Ladies and gentlemen, today is World Town Planning Day and it is hoped that·this seminar will make an appropriate contribution towards the celebration of that day. We hope that it will also make a contribution to what I think is coming to be called "planning in action".

The seminar is sponsored by a very diversified group of organisations, whose Objectives on a day-to-day basis are quite different. The one area of agreement, and it is a vital one, is the desire to make a contribution to the discussion·of the future of the inner suburbs and their future planning.

We commend the fact that the Board of Works has already produced a position· paper on the inner suburbs and has established a committee to follow this up. We hope that by coming b~re today,· by listening to the speakers that we have assembled, contributing to the discussion and in the publication of the proceedings at a slightly. later date, we will in fact make quite a step forward in development of planning policies for the inner areas. It is for this very reason that we have put together a varied group of speakers in anticipation that we might be able to get across a series of important messages, both to you, the audience, and to the people outside.

There is one final comment I would like to make and that is that in drawing up the programme you will have noticed we refer to a series of suburbs as being the inn~r areas. Of course, we ~ould be happy to discuss areas beyond the ones listed in the programme. We are not at all confined to that group ·• but we did believe we had to offer some sort of starting point for the speakers themselves and hopefullT for the discussion that follows.

We have been very honoured today to have the Rt. Hon. the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Councillor Irvin Rockman, come from a very interesting series of morning engagements and to break into what is going to be, I believe, another busy afternoon, to open our seminar. Would you please welcome him.

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OPENING ADDRESS

Cr Irvin Rockman

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I really am very pleased to be here this afternoon so that I can say that the Melbourne City Council puts its imprimatur on the work that you are trying to achieve here. I do not want to lecture you at length because I think that there are people far more esoteric and knowledgeable than I am to talk seriously about the topics that you have listed. I spent some time this morning with Olivia Newton-John so it is quite a contrast to turn my mind to something which is of absolutely vital concern to the City of Melbourne - by that, I mean particularly the CBD, the central core and the surrounding residential areas.

You are probably all aware that one of the main planks in the City of Melbourne Strategy 'Pian is to encourage the growth and preservation of the inner suburbs and really, in a sense, there is a little bit of a conflict I think in those two aims. Population is being depleted in our inner suburbs as land values rise and as densities per dwelling (as a result of this and other factors) tend to ·drop. So we have seen over a period of years quite a diminution in residential population which is of concern to us and we have seen the growing doughnut effect which is talked about quite often.

On the other hand, we want to keep places like East Melbourne, South Parkville and so on with their original flavour and atmosphere-as far as possible to retain the streetscapes. Then we have a problem,of course, that if you are going to do that, you are not able at the same time, unless it is in highly selected locations and with the right sort of planning principles, to encourage dense development and thereby to get more population back. Of course, with the.present economic factors operating in our community, with high inflation and high costs, it is difficult for people (if we are going to go into Commercial property development in a residential sense) to make things meet or at least to find that their opportunities in and around the central core are as attractive as if they went further out.

Again, there is another problem which I am sure you are all aware of and that is the one of historic preservation. There are a number of studies going on, have gone on and are continuing in the residential areas but when these studies come to hand, they make certain recommendations, whether they be for Drummond Street, Carlton or wherever, and then there is the difficulty of putting them into practice. There is the difficulty because of the problems of local government, political machinery, problems because of the relationship in the planning process .between local government and other authorities, agencies of the State Government and the State Government itself. Then there are the sort of issues that affect historic preservation in the central business district. In some ways, they may flow over into the residential areas.

I seem-always, when I am talking seriously, to be articulating the problems: and I suppose that is just as important in some ways as articulating the aims because it is fairly easy to say what you want to do but something else to achieve it, given all the permutations of the government processes, of the legislation and even of the aspirations of thepeoplewho live in the residential areas.

Traffic management is a tremendous problem. The people who live in the inner areas want to see their harmony and way of life protected but these are constantly being invaded by a stream of cars parking and a stream of traffic flowing through all the time. So we try to deal with that and it,is not easy because of the conflicting pressures. On the one hand - I am talking now from the Council's point of view - we want to do what we think is the right thing by our residents. The things that they want, for example, residential parking. . 3.

Then on the other hand we have the demands of the total Melbourne community. .., If we are going to make the centre core something itself (I now talk about the commercial centre), we have now got to have some access into it. So you try and find a way that will either be a middle course or balance up all interests in the right proportion and come up with the right result.

I do not want to be personal but I am very pleased to see that we have got Keith Dunstan sitting here because I think I am quoting Keith directly when he said at some point or other, Melbourne is the most charming nineteenth Century city in the world and I suppose that has got a lot to recommend itself in terms 0£ the inner suburbs. If you talk about Melbourne in general terms, that is one of the assets that this city has - if it expresses itself physically I suppose - but we do live in a place of great charm, nice atmosphere, relatively peaceful and quiet compared with some of the other great cities of the world., .... If you want to make a comparison with Tokyo - well, then we are streets, ahead, of course.

I was talking just a second ago about traffic problems and I think I should just allude briefly to something like the Fl9 and the transport problems that face our inner city. One of the most difficult things to deal with is the dichotomy between local government and the State Government (and then further removed the Federal Government) pursuing perhaps different aims, dealing in the one area, one having overriding powers and, in my view, not acknowledging philosophically the importance of the city. I use the word city in the sense of the whole municipality of Melbourn~ and I think you could add to that, if You wanted to, Collingwood, Fitzroy, parts of Prahran and so on because we are talking about the _inner suburbs.

I think if the planning problems are to be resolved, then the transport difficulties have to be overcome, because whatever you do in terms of planning streets, creating landscapes, setting rules and regulations •.. if transport is not sympathetic to it, if it does not dove-tail in, if it does not tie in well, then it is not going to happen. I think that is one area that ought to be·examined.

Having said all that and having said to you that the problems are manifold, I think it is a good thing that a group of so many different bodies, sometimes with differing aims, are able to get together to talk on an occasion like this and I personally favour very, very much a form of communication between people, even if they appear to be on opposite ends of the scale. I am not suggesting that the Committee for Urban Action and the Institute of Architects are necessarily at loggerheads but there are differing points of view between the five or six bodies that are involved here today. If you can get together and if you can talk it out (although we all get very tired of talking - I know I do - unless it is to Olivia Newton-John, of course), then maybe there will be some solution in sight.

So, Mr Chairman, I thank you very much for giving me the honour of coming here today. I am sorry I will not be able to stay for very long but no doubt there will be a paper available afterwards. I urge you, if it is at all possible, to come to some conclusions, whether by way of formal resolution or whatever we want '\ so that, coming out of this seminar, there might be a voice that says this, that or the other and at least get some unanimity and head together. Therefore, I have a great deal of pleasure in declaring the seminar officially open. Thank you. .4.

THE ROLE OF THE INNER SUBURBS

Dr Graeme Davison

I am sure that no one, when.they ask an historian on an occasion like this, expects him to tell them what they should do. So I have no intention this afternoon of outlining my own solutions to the functions or the proper functions of the inner suburbs. The best perhaps an historian can do is to prevent those who have notions of their own from abusing the past when they spell out those soiutions.

Critics have·sometimes wondered why urban planning has such a short and sorry history in Australia. The answer, they are inclined to say, is that ours is an aggressively capitalist society, resistant to the imposition of centralised or state control, particularly when it comes to real estate. Town planning was strangled at bir.:th by property rights. No one, I suppose, V!ould deny that business interests have often been opposed to planners. But the slow growth of what we might call a "planning consciousness" is also deeply rooted in the historical experience of Australian cities and especially of their inner areas.

In older European societies, the need for urban planning was already well apparent during the late nineteenth century and was based on a growing public awareness of the conflicts emerging between the city's historical role and its contemporary functions. Civil and sanitary engineers, architects and doctors, town councillors and politicians had.come face-to~face with the problem of adapting the out-worn fabric of pre-industrial cities to the demands of the railway age. By foreseeing and redirecting the course of urban development, they hoped to avoid the economic waste and social disruption that old towns seem fated to suffer in their adaptation to new functions.

Australian cities, on the other hand, had evolved entirely during the post­ industrial period. New technologies, such as railways and tramways, could be built into the cities as they grew rather than superimposed on putmoded urban structures. Population growth could be handled ~in*y by suburban­ isation - tacking new estates onto the fringe rather than rehabilitating older areas at the centre.

The conflicts which beset European city dwellers at the end of the nineteenth century did not really become acute in Australia until the mid-twentieth century. When they did, it was primarily in the inner areas of the central cities that the issues were most clearly focussed.

The peculiarly Australian term that we apply to this region - "the inner suburbs" - expresses our own confusion about its functions. It is part of the inner city and its fortunes are closely linked to those of the CBD; yet it is also, in some sense, "suburban", embodying its residents' aspirations for a quieter kind of domestic and community life. These conflicts are far from new to the area but it is perhaps only in recent years that a new class of professional residents has given them voice. This afternoon I would like briefly to review the historical development of the inner suburbs, focussing particularly on these functional conflicts between their role as centres of production and their role as residential areas.

Over the past 130 years or so, I think we can distinguish four clear periods of functional development in the inner area of Melbourne which also happen to represent distinct stages in the social and political history of the inner area. The first we might describe as immigrant communities and that might· cover the period from roughly 1840 to the 1870s, the second might be described as working class suburbs roughly from 1870 to the turn of the ·century, the their period might be described as industrial regions from about 1900 to 1945, . 5.

and the fourth period, perhaps the most mixed in.functional uses, we might describe very broadly as predominantly migrant reception areas. Let me just review those stages in turn.

Melbourne was founded in the dying years of Regency England and the plans for the inner suburbs which government surveyors laid down in the 1840s and 1850s retained at least a semblance of the formal principles of town design which We associate with that era. It was they who fixed upon the rectangular grid of 25 acre allotments which determined the overall street plan, who laid out the sc~eme of wide streets and squares in places like North Carlton an~ who made special iand grants for community purposes at the centre of the projected townships of Richmond, Emerald Hill, Sandridge and so on.

But by 1860, these town plans ~ere far from being realised. Most of the 25 acre a11otments were still··· to be subdivided and the residents of inner suburbs consisted mainly of large semi-rural landowners. The wide streets of North Carlton were lined not with e+egant three storey terrace houses but with humble timber cottages and the town centres with their municipal halls, post offices, public baths, libraries and churches remained merely for spaces on the map. When the first wave of population hit the inner suburbs, in the early 1850s, its sheer force overthrew all the fine assumptions of Regency planning and reshaped the inner areas on more straight forwardly commercial principles. The surveyors' standard 66' allotments were subdivided and re-subdivided into 44•, 33', 22', 16~' and even 11' frontages. Between their wide thoroughfares, crafty speculators and conniving councillors ran narrow lane·s and a1·1eys to give access to pocket-handkerchief building blocks. The well integrated community centres which they envisaged for each of the townships were seldom built as they had planned: in Richmond, for example, land had been set aside along Bridge Road near the present Town Hall for each of the main religious dominations but all eventually moved to more prestigious sites on Richmond Hill.

Under the pressure of gold rush immigration, the inner suburbs were transformed overnight into wood and canvas shanty towns. One morning in 1852, an ·English visitor, William Howitt, walked from his city lodgings to the top of Eastern Hill. Away to the east, stretching in a great arc from Fitzroy to Richmond, he looked down on "an immense suburb" of little wooden tenements. "This (he wrote) is one of the first things which has impressed me with the reality of the rapidly running torrent of immigration.. Here is a new settlement in all its newness. The houses are some of them incomplete, others are just erecting. A balder and more unattractive scene cannot meet the eye of man. Every single tree has been levelled to the ground, it is one hard,' bare expanse, bare of all nature's attractions, a wilderness of modern huts of Lilliputiandimensions, and everywhere around and amongst them, timber and rubbish, delightfully interspersed with pigs, hens, goats and dogs innumerable."

More than two-thirds of the city's population still resided within the City of Meibourne where inns and boarding houses were filled to overflowing with young bachelors on their way through Melbourne to the gold fields. The shanty towns of the inner suburbs catered rather for young families unable to afford the astronomical rents of the central business district and anxious to escape its rowdiness and vice. Many households were headed, for the time being, by womenfolk, while their husbands _tried their luck on the diggings.

With the never-ending traffic to and from the goldfields, it was some time before these shanty towns settled down into permanent communities. By the early 1860s, though, their character had· become clearly defined. Throughout .6.

this first phase of development they remained, in quite tangible ways, independent self-contained towns. Intervening strips of park swamp or undeveloped real estate meant that each stood separately from its neighbours.

The separate identity of each town or suburb was determined, very largely, by the character of its immigrant population. North Melbourne (or Hotham as it was then called) and West Melbourne contained large numbers of Irish settlers many of whom worked as labourers on the nearby wharves or railway yards; South Melbourne, the main centre of maritime engineering, had a high population Of Scots while Collingwood and Richmond, with their bootmaking and clothing industries., had larger than usual numbers of Englishmen. In social or occupational terms, however, these suburran townships were all fairly mixed in composition. Each had a small elite of merchants, professional men or landowners; a strong lower middle class of shopkeepers, builders, and other independent tr.adesmen; and a sturdy working class of independent artisans.

"Richmond", a local newspaper observed, "is not like other metropolitan offshoots - a business piace bµt a residential one. Many old inhabitants of the Colony are located in ·it. Business and clerks seek the quietude of its shelter after the bustle and fatigue of the day. An intelligent, inaependent body of workingmen have pitched their residences in it and the best proof of their honourable character and moral conduct is that their homes are their own property".

By t~e 1860s the inner suburbs had developed a modest industrial base. Along the river bank at South Richmond, Burnley and Abbotsford there were tanneries, abattoirs and wool washing establishments; further downstream at South and West Melbourne there were boiler-making and ship repair yards; while along the main inner suburban thoroughfares - such as Bridge Road, Swan Street and Smith Street - immigrant cabinet makers, tailors, hatters and shoemakers pursued the crafts they had brought from Britain.

At this early stage of development factories remained small and industrial relations were fairly friendly and intimate. Local society organised itself around a network of friendly societies, mutual improvement associations and political clubs in which masters and men participated on fairly equal terms. The political expression of this sense of community was the radical protectionist movement which sprung up in the inner suburbs during the 1860s. This brings me really to the second phase which I have described as the working class suburbs.

During the second phase of their evolution, between about 1870 and 1900, the inner suburbs gradually ceased to exist as a loose constellation of independent townships and began to merge into a belt of working class suburbs. The detailed maps of urban development which the MMBW prepared around the turn of the century indicate how far the process of subdivision and construction.had broken down the physical integrity of individual suburbs. During the land boom of the 1880s virtually every remaining track of municipal urban land was sllbdivided and built upon.

With the extension of rail and tramway networks new suburbs like Hawthorn and Northcote and so on, were opening up on the borders of the inner area. Main streets like Bridge Road and Johnston Street were no longer simply local thoroughfares but major arteries in the metropolis. The informal street corner society of the 1860s was beginning to break down. The first generation of ' immigrant pioneers gradually faded from the scene, sometimes moving to new garden suburbs further out. The small workshop, with its elementary division of labour and informal work discipline, was supplanted by the large impersonal factory. These changes, which had been building up over the previous two decad~s, came to a head during the land boom during the 1880s. The ties which had previously bound the inner suburban resident to a local community had become . 7.

less important than those linking him to the larger metropolis.

By 1890 the inner suburbs had almost taken over from the City of Melbourne as the main industrial zone of the metropolis. Yet factory jobs probably occupied .Only about one quarter of the inner city's male.workforce. (It was unquestionably a much higher proportion of the female workforce). The remaining three quarters of the male workforce were employed in a wide range of construction, service, retail and labouring occupations. Many inner suburban residents still worked in the central business district and, as late as 1891, a Collingwood councillor claimed th~t "we have a very large population of artisans working in Melbourne. A great many walk to town in the morning and home at night". Nevertheless, as the main local source of employment, manufacturing exerted the powerful influence on the landscape and society of the inner suburbs. South Melbourne - the centre of the booming metal and timber-milling industries - was also among the fastest growing ··suburbs of the 1880s, while a relative stagnation of Fitzroy and Collingwood was closely linked to the difficulties of their clothing and footwear industries. Th~ "sw~ating" problem, which bedevilled industrial relations in the 1880s and 1890s, was rooted in the economic difficulties of these highly protected, but vulnerable, piecework industries.

Industrial strife was only one of a series of new social problems affecting the inner suburbs towards the end of the century. Some, like the growing threat of epidemic disease, stemmed from the process of physical expansion itself. Cramming row upon row of cheap timber·cottages on pocket handkerchief allotments was a recipe for environmental disaster and in 1888-9, the inner suburbs of Collingwood, Richmond and South Melbourne became the focus for a severe epidemic of typhoid.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the inner suburbs had become identified, in the minds of their residents, and in the eyes of other Melbournians, with the working class. The sense of antagonism and deprivation, born of the industrial conflicts and environmental decay of the 1880s, was later expressed in political and sporting rivalries. In the 1890s, the Labour Party emerged as the main poiitical force in the inner suburbs. In its early years, the party took over much of the outlook of radical Protectionism, and from Frank Tudor down to Jim Cairns, the member for Yarra was always an ardent Protectionist. But by 1900, the old mutuality of interest between master and man, which had been the original foundation of Protection, had been largely destroyed. The inner suburbs were becoming aware of themselves as the territory of a class.

The third period is that of the industrial region. By the end of the nineteenth century, the population of the City of ·Melbourne peaked, then began to decline. The dispersion of industry to the outer suburbs, which had gone ahead rapidly during the boom decade, was reversed in the 1890s. Even during the depression, when investment was almost at a standstill, there·was some industrial redevelopment in the inner city. After 1900 industrialisation quickened as large factories invaded the inner suburbs. The expansion of Foy and Gibson's large industrial complex on Smith Street, Collingwood swallowed up more than 200 cottages and similar incursions were caused by the growth of Bryant and May and Pelaco in Richmond, John Danks in South Melbourne and so on.

Many of the gimcrack timber cottages run up during the gold rush had long ago reached the end of their useful lives. Local councils were sometimes reluctant r • to condemn old h~uses when there was nowhere else for their tenants to go, but in the first fourteen years of the twentieth century approximately 5% of the dwellings in Fitzroy and Collingwood were condemned and about half of these actually demolis~ed. ' .8.

Even before the Great War, the impact of industrialisation on the residents of the inner suburbs had become a publie issue. The agitation of slum reformers and planning advocates, like Arthur Pearson and Dr James Barrett, led to the establishment of a Royal Commission of Housing in the Metropolis which highlighted the overcrowding and poor sanitation in areas like South Fitzroy, North Melbourne and South Carlton, which bordered on the central business district. Here were to be observed the classic problems of a "zone-in-transition:" a low paid, unskilled workforce was hav~ng to compete for a diminishing stock of cheap, accessible housing.

Between 1900 and 1920, many former residents of the inner suburbs especially clerical workers and skilled tradesmen, moved out to the suburbs. The costs of public transport had fallen quite significantly in relation to incomes and traffic, especially to the lower middle class northern suburbs, grew dramatically. But this outward movement of commuters was more than balanced by the growth of unskilled manufacturing employment in the inner suburbs. So the pressure on the housing.stock of the inner city remained as strong as ever.

Many city jobs were tied, functionally as well as economically, to inner city residence. There was, for example, the great army of women breadwinners, numbering thousands according to some witnesses, who tramped into the city in the early hours of the morning, before the trams and trains were running to Clean offices or make breakfast in city hotels. Until the widespread introduction of the automobile in the late 1920s, most cab men and lorry drivers needed to keep their stables close to the docks and railhead. In the clothing and footwear industries of Fitzroy and Collingwood, the prevalence of the "outwork" system also reinforced patterns of local residence. As industry expanded and the housing stock diminished, workers often found rents rising above their capacity to pay. Larger houses were divided into furnished or unfurnished apartments and even small cottages were sometimes shared by more than one family. In South Carlton, where this tendency was particularly marked, a local policeman notj,ced that "the people who occupy (these apartments) were those who wished to live close to the city on account of their work or so as to be near the big markets, where they could procure their household necessaries cheaply".

By the 1920s, it is true, the locational constraints tying factory jobs to the inner city had begun to ease. Electric power and automobile transport enabled industry to move out to cheaper land on the urban fringe. Footscray, Sunshine and Brunswick took over as the city's main industrial areas. Nevertheless, manufacturing continued to absorb an increasing share of employment in the inner suburbs.. Between the turn of the century and the end of the Second World War, the population of the "inner core" increased from 169,107 to 185,656 (10.2%) while factory employment in the same region grew from 20,434 to 91,427 (350%). Even in the early 1950s, the residential population of the inner suburbs especially the old industrial core of Collingwood, Fitzroy and Richmond, was heavily dependent on local manufacturing employment. . A 1951 survey found that 44% of resident workers were employed within the region and about 40% either walked or rode a bike to work. But, by this time, residents comprised scarcely one third of the local workforce and there were now very large contingents of in-commuters from bordering suburbs, especially Brunswick, Northcote,' Hawthorn and Kew.

The changing industrial and residential structure of the inner suburbs had profound effects upon local society. During the interwar years, the fortunes of the, inner areas had ceased to be shaped, to any significant extent, by their own residents. The ownership of industry had passed into the hands of public companies and absentee proprietors. In exceptional cases, like Sir Macpherson Robertson, manufacturers could still play a philanthropic role, providing "model" . 9. housing and taking an active role in local affairs. But more commonly they treated their employees, out of working hours, with benign neglect. Levels of owner occupa~ion had continued to decline since the late nineteenth century and in 1947 averaged about 25% of householders in the inner industrial suburbs. Now that only a fraction of local employees were also local residents it became difficult to maintain the fragile network of face-to-face community. Political machines, like that associated with the name of John Wren, were syrnptomatic of this disjunction between "cornrnunity" and "power". The incompetence and petty corruption of municipal politics between the wars were directly associated with.the decay of the inner suburban communities themselves.

The inner ·Suburbs had developed first of all, in the 1850s and early 1860s, as a "reception area" for the overflow of the gold rush immigrants. In the fourth and final phase of their evolution, during the 1950s and 1960s, the employment and housing of migrants again became perhaps their principle function. But the influx of post-war migrants was a different kind and the social environment that they entered w~s very different from that of 100 years before. As first­ comers, the migrants of the 1850s were, in a very real sense, the creators of the inner suburbs: the physical environment, the folkways, the economic and political structures were theirs to mould as they willed. The migrants of the 1950s and .1960s came into a society where the patterns of ownership and control, language and culture and the physical environment itself were already firmly established. The 1950s and 1960s saw the most rapid increase in Melbourne's population since the land boom of the 1880s. From the standpoint of native Melbournians, the most obvious manifestation of the city's growth was the wide ring of cream brick veneer suburbs that extended 15-20 miles out to the orchards of Doncaster, the foreshores of Beaurnaris and the windswept outer reaches of Preston and Bundoora. What the old Melbournians did not always recognise was that more than two thirds of the metropolis' net population growth was supplied by foreign immigration and that the sprawl of Australian­ born on the suburban fringe was balanced by a new concentration of irnrnigrants in the old inner core. The inner city continued to lose population during the post-war period. Calculations by the demographer, Ian Burnley, suggest that Australian-born residents of the inner area may have declined by as much as 50% between 1947 and 1966. In fact, the 1950s possibly saw the final disintegration of the old Irish-Catholic working class of the inner suburbs. It is arguable that the split which rent the Australian Labor Party during that decade had its basis in the geographical division between the traditional working class of the inner core and that mobile fragment of Catholics that had, only recently, moved out into white collar employment and the lower middle class northern suburbs. The strongholds of the DLP in the early 1960s would be found in precisely those weatherboard bungalow suburbs, such as Coburg, Northcote and Essendon, which lay in the path of these refugees from the inner suburbs.

As the Australian-born moved out, their cottages and terraces were occupied by the influx of migrants. The successive waves of immigration had left their mark like a series of tidal rings on the townscape of the inner suburbs. The early flows of skilled northern Europeans (British, German, Dutch) were quickly absorbed into the Australian mainstream and by the mid 1960s their residence patterns were very similar to those of the Australian born population. But the later flows of largely unskilled southern European irnrnigrants, from mainly rural backgrounds, tended to concentrate in the inner city region. Of the inflow of foreign born migrants to the inner core, more than three-quarters came from the three main southern European sources: Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. The peak of Italian migration came in the late 1950s but by mid 1960s Italians had abandoned many of their original settlement areas to a new influx of Greeks. Broadly speaking, the poorer and less education the irnrnigrant group, and the later. they arrived in the sequence of migration, the more they tended to concentrate in a distinct neighbourhood~ .10.

The functions of the inner suburbs for the inunigrant family are nicely brought out in an incident reported in Wendy Lowenstein and Moray Loh's, "The Immigrants". Guiseppi, the teller of the tale, had immigrated from Italy in 1958. Some time later, when he was better established, he brought out his wife. He himself was working long hours of shift work and had little time to reflect on his situation but soon he noticed that his wife was unhappy. "What's wrong with you?"he asked. "You are unhappy?" "Yes", she replied, "I am unhappy. I have my mother,_ you, my daughter. But where you brought me? I'm dying! Five o'clock, everything is finished in this street, no noise, nothing. Everything is dead, like a cemetery." Then she began to cry. A little later, the family moved to Lygon Street, Carlton. Now she could speak. Now she could shop. Everything was understood. "Here very good", she said and soon she had a job in a nearby bistro.

But the immigrant neighbourhood.was much more than an oasis of homeland culture. Its prime importance was as a source of unskilled jobs and cheap housing. In the early stages of settlement, an immigrant family may depend heavily on employment not only for its male members but particularly for its womenfolk. Immigrant labour, in turn, may have helped to prop up some otherwise uncompetitive sections of manufacturing industry. The dreadful conditions of work documented in CURA's report on migrant women in the workforce, "But I wouldn't want my wife to work here", is eloquent testimony both to the decay of the inner suburban industries and the economic vulnerability of the migrant family.

Migrants were also attracted to the inner suburbs because they provided a source of cheap housing. In the early stages, Italian migrants were often able to secure large well-built terrace houses in once fashionable sections of the inner suburbs. But the 1960s, as the "gentrification" of the inner areas got underway, the later waves of Greeks and Yugoslavs was forced into poorer timber cottages on the low lying parts of Abbotsford, Burnley and Montague. Since the bad old days of "slum clearance" in the 1960s, there has been an increased emphasis on the retention and renovation of inner city residential areas. But· ·there are probably still some sections of poorer housing which are unsuitable for rehabilitation and unlikely to become "gentrified". Unlike the previous generation of immigrants, their inhabitants cannot look forward to a new wave of immigration that will, in turn, push them out into better housing in the suburbs. These concentrations of unlucky last-corners - Greeks, Lebanese and Turks - have been much slower to disperse than their predecessors. Many commentators have noted, with approval, the high rates of home-ownership among southern European migrants. But the jerry-built cottages that these groups have purchased down on the Collingwood and Richmond flat, could turn out to be millstones around their necks, if those areas themselves were to become economically moribund.

I said, at the beginning of this paper, that there have been four main stages in the functional evolution of the inner suburbs. In truth, there are probably five. Since the early 1960s, and therefore overlapping to some extent the period of migrant settlement, the middle classes had begun to move back to the inner suburbs. In many respects, this last migration has had more evident effects on the power structure of the inner area than on its economic functions. (Indeed, it is arguable that the very term "the inner suburbs" is now a political rather than a functional one, symbolising the resistance of otherwise very different people and interests to the intrusion of traffic and the like). In the 1930s, a local council in the inner suburbs might have included a shopkeeper, a publican, a bookmaker or a clerk; now there are teachers, architects, lawyers, social workers, librarians; even town planners. Forty years ago, power brokers in 'the inner. suburbs swapped favours; nowadays, they trade expertise. Whether this makes them more representative, or does their constituents more good, I leave you to judge. .11.

Over the past one hundred and thirty years, the inner suburbs have seen a good deal of change. But the fact that they have changed does not nec.essarily mean that they are adaptable; just as the fact that they have been a mixed area does not mean that the mix has always been a happy one. There . . have been times, like the 1880s, when industrial decay and the sheer pace of residential expansion have overloaded their physical structures ~nd produced problems of disease, crime and alienation and others, like the interwar years, When the dominance of the area by absentee industrialists and landlords has broken down community structures and sapped local initiative. By the standards of those unhappy times, the present condition of the inner suburbs seems moderately .·healthy. .12.

A PERSONAL VIEW

Mrs Anne Latreille

Ladies and gentlemen, last week I wrote a piece for my Wednesday colUIIUl on this seminar and possibly the central point of it was the fact that Philip Adams and Keith Dunstan were speaking, and perhaps this might provide a leavening of the usual heavy professional input of a seminar like this. I sent the piece in and it did not appear because there was not enough space. That Wednesday morning, I was still reminding myself of the fact when Warwick Forge telephoned .. an

I hope you are not too disappointed by not having Philip Adams here. I am not exactly of his dimensions either physically or professionally and I am not at all good at being funny., as he is, but I do have experience of living in Melbourne's inner suburbs, whi~h I suppose is why I have been asked to speak today.

I have not attended a great many seminars of this nature but I hope I am right in saying that they do provide a tremendous ground for exchange of ideas. I have been looking through the list of speakers here today and I see great expertise in the fields of urban history, local and state government, transport planning, economics and conservation.' I know that at least a couple of these experts live in the inner suburbs but I wonder how many of the other speakers and how many people in the audience have firsthand experience of inner suburban living ..

Since it is the week for gambling in Melbourne, at which I have already had an unsuccessful go myself, I am going to take a punt that a number of you do not have that firsthand experience and I am going to talk in extremely simple terms, that I hope you do not find boring, about the part of the City of Prahran, where I have lived for the past ten years. I hope this might provide some sort of backdrop for the more professional speakers.

My husband and I call it "the armpit of South Yarra". It is a block bounded by four very major streets, which are perpetually crowded with traffic and nearly all lined with shops. This means that a fair proportion of that traffic finds its way out onto the streets, seeking short cuts to shopping centres, industrial or business premises, the Prahran market, all of which are contained within the block. This causes great problems in the streets within that block which for the most part are betwe~n four and six metres wide. More of the traffic problem later.

I was born in the country and I came to Melbourne to live as a University student. I spent three years in Parkville, then a year in Malvern, where the streets were wide and the houses very commodious and it was a lovely place to live but I never met or hardly even sighted a neighbour.

I came to South Yarra as a newly married in 1968. We were looking for a house to buy and we did not have much money. We had a bit of a check around South Melbourne and saw a couple of nice places but they were pretty expensive, and we did not really like the wide spaces down there. Then we sighted this place in South Yarra which was advertised as a development site with brick, timber and fibro-cement dwelling. The agent was a bit jaundiced. He said it was- a ~eal little love nest when we billed and cooed about the hearts wh~ch were around the early.Victorian chimney pots. We did not take any notice of the cracking walls and peeling p_laster and the derelict garden. We bought it for about the same .13.

amount of money you would spend today on renovating the kitchen and the bathroom. Those were the days! Our parents thought we were mad, and I suspect so did a lot of our friends. The area was certainly not salubrious. Like many inner suburban blocks at the time, it was haunted by the spectre of the Housing Commission.

The street was about half and half brick and timber, half and half long-term Australian residents and migrants. The houses were generally clean but the overall impression was down at heel. We moved in and I am rather ashamed to admit put up our standard high brick fence, which was the first in the street.

I remember a few things about those early days. I recall the old man who lived next door saying, yes, it was a nice piece of land but why would we ever want to do anything.with that· house. I remember my mother-in-law reporting that a real estate agent friend had told her the street was most unsuitable for a newly married couple and that there had been murders committed there after the last war. I remember the bank manager saying that he co.uld not possibly lend us what we asked on that house in that area and I remember the valuer from another bank describing it as unfit for human habitation. It is a good thing the Housing Commission had not looked inside. I remember a taxi driver bringing me ·home from work one night, turning around to stare at me when I gave my address and asking what a nice girl like me was doing living in a street like that and then reminiscing about the sly grog and other shenanigans which had been going on there until the era of ten o'clock closing came in.

Later on, I remember a neighbour we referred to as"Super kid" between ourselves. He was middle-aged with a ready and rather ingratiating smile. He made a living doing the occasional spot of painting but he was usually to be seen leaning against his house (which was a converted corner store a few doors up) with his hands in his pockets. One day, he came down our drive and asked me if I liked French perfume. "Well, yes", I said a little bit warily. "I have got a gift pack of Joy", he said. "It's worth thirty bucks. You can have it for ten". "Oh!" I-said, thinking quickly. "Joy is the one I really do not like". "What do you like?" he said. "I can get it for you!". He got off the subject of perfume but when he started bringing me a leather coat or suit in a range of colours and sizes depending which box had fallen off the truck, I decided to call it a day. "Superkid" got terrifically excited as more high brick fences started going up along the street and a few cars appeared, rather more flashy than the ones that had been there before. A meeting with him on the way up the street to the shops or the market was always good for an animated discussion on real estate. He sold out eventually at a time when we were overseas. I never heard but I hope he got a good price.

It is always said of the inner suburbs of any city, not just Melbourne, that they offer amazing diversity. Let me tell you in some detail about that Street in which I lived for about six years. It is about a half mile long. It contained, at that time, as well as a lot of houses and one block of flats, two service stations, one electroplating factory, four operating corner stores, a factory making fibre-glass boats, which was actually just around the corner but its fumes were in our street, a wood yard, a Russian Orthodox Church, a pub, a girls home later to become a school (now the building is demolished)~a large park and a small pocket park. This mix of· uses had its problems not the least of which was the traffic associated with the electroplating factory, which happened to be opposite our house. Have you ever seen an industrial waste truck trying to turn in a six metre wide street with practically non-existent footpaths. I have - every weekday .14.

morning while I lived there and I had a thrice knocked down, many times cracked front brick fence to p~ove. it, which I suppose goes to prove that brick fences are not always the best in the inner suburbs. .. The street has undergone change since I moved out, three years ago. The woodyard and both factories have gone, the pub has had an almighty facelift and houses demolished to provide car parking for it. The resultant traffic tears up and down through the four intersecting streets and makes life a misery. Prahran Council is about to convert the street to one way in an effort to reduce the traffic. Perhaps this device will work. I guess we will see.

Plenty of the old-time residents are still there. The Maltese family is there, next to our old house, their neat weatherboard cottage painted in immaculate technicolour with a two-toned Maltese Cross appliqued to the chimney. They have never had a car. The son of the house, who, I guess, is in his mid-forties, has always worked locally and so has his father. The old man in his nineties who was our other immediate neighbour has now moved to an old people's home in Punt Road but he still comes twice daily - you can actually set your watch by him - to visit the friend-who lives in his old house! He was born in the street you see and he had always lived there and he does not want to lose touch.

The corner stores are soldiering on. They live presently under the threat of a 7-11 store opening on the corner of the street. This has been to the Town Planning Appeals Tribunal and the Tribunal disallowed the development proposal for the store, which would have meant pulling down a couple of existing houses in the street.

The zoning right along the street is residential, as far as I know. Other uses are established non-conforming uses and ·this I believe is important because it is so typical of the inner suburbs. Building stock may be used for all sorts of purposes but the character of the streets in most cases is. basically residential - and that is the way I think it should stay. I do not always agree with the Tribunal's decisions but I thought this one was pretty soundly argued. They visited the area and ruled that the development was out of order because the demolition of the houses would damage the residential character of the street but the way was left open for reapplication. This could be extremely bad news for the four families in the. street who make their living out of their corner stores - in one case, seven days a week from 7 am to 9.40 pm,. 365 days a year with a half-day off on Good Friday and Christmas Day. They provide a really excellent service for the local people, particularly the oldies who cannot go far to do their shopping. The slightly higher prices that these stores charge are, I think, justified by their convenience and the extra personal contact you get there which you never find in the large supermarkets or chain stores.

I could.not really imagine living in any other part of Melbourne, so, Providentially, when we moved house, our new place was just at the end of· our old street and across the railway line. The setting was basically the same, the street just as narrow, the traffic just as bad. There is not quite the diversity of occupation but as well as about fifty houses in the street it boasts a block of flats, a park, a creche, a printing works and a coffee-making factory.

It is an interesting area with the fascinating nooks and crannies which are so typical of the inner suburbs. Between our house and the railway line, there is a row of little cottages and one larger house all with no street frontage. They look onto a footpath which runs by the railway cutting. There are a couple of overhanging peppercorn trees there and it's a gorgeous spot for

L' .15.

kids to play and young people to stop and chat. The four cottages have car• accesses of a sort through_a narrow rear lane, the larger house has nothing - it can only be reached on foot. Its inhabitants have been there about twenty years - they obviously do not mind. A little further away is a spot, which is only accessible by way of a bluestone lane, which run:; in the shadow of a really high brick wall around the local Catholic church and school.

The first time I explored this lane, I did not know what I would find at the end. The lane did a right-angled turn, so did I, and there in front of me was a long stretch of green lawn in front of three really nice, generous, single-fronted terrace houses. A dog ran out and barked at me across the lawn. It was a lovely afternoon. The sun was shining and the houses face west so there were a couple of people sitting in cane chairs on the verandahs, sunning themselves •. It was a most gorgeous scene. I went across in front of the lawn and back down another bluestone lane.

The next time I wanted to find the spot, I could not find it. I had forgotten exactly where the lanes came off and I had to go to the Melways to find out exactly what it was called and how to get there.

This is part of the charm of the inner suburbs. There are byways and nice little corners where you do not expect them. It is because the inner suburbs just grew at a time when the city was going out by leaps and bounds and particularly the meaner parts of the areas - workers' cottages serving the grander dwellings, the industrial and commercial enterprises - they were not then the product of rational planning nor do I think they respond well now to traditional planning approaches.

Although the part of South Yarra I am talking about is made up mainly of small houses on small blocks o~ land, our house, in fact, is rather larger and is on a big block. Most people living around there have two or at the most three neighbours, one down each side and one across the back. We happen to have eight - we have two down one side, two across the back and four up the other side.

At the risk of sounding a little introspective, I will tell you a little about these neighbours, because they really are as typical of an inner suburban mix as I have come across. The woman on one side has been in her house for thirty years. Her parents-in-law bought it half a century ago and she moved in after she was married. She now shares it with her daughter and a couple of cats. She does not go out much - she ·shops at the corner sto.re and she is an absolute expert at the TAB. She says over the years she has seen no great change in the area except for the "foreigners", in quotes. She is not very keen on migrants. She lives on a corner and her front fence is regularly demolished by speeding traffic. The last motorcyclist that hit it ended up fifteen feet away on her front verandah. Next door to her is the husband and .wife that I spoke of before with no car access to their house. They have been there for about twenty years and I think they are Scottish. Across the back is the family of Greek people, four generations in all. They run a shop in Richmond and they live above the shop during the we,ek and spend their weekends in South Yarra - which is a nice touch. Great Grandma is the archetypal black, bent figure, who does not speak a word of English. The house seems to expand and contract to accommodate the varying number of n small kids who speak excellent strine and are fond of hanging over my back fence, engaging me in animated conversation while I am working in my vegie garden and when the attractions in their tiny backyard have palled. The other neighbour onthisboundary is a factory from which fountain pens and other associated goods are distributed. It makes no noise and no fumes but the .!6.

reps' cars can cause parking problems in the next street. Along our east boundary is a row of three single fronted old houses very small. One is owned by a young couple who have just had a baby and will probably move on because they need more space. The next one is owned by ~ nurse who I think is in her mid thirties. She seems happy there - she has been there for about five years. The third has just been bought by a young block who is renovating "to sell". Before that, it was tenanted by an assortment of people - one lot who only came out after dark and eventually did a midnight flit. Another pair kept 'an enormous pair of English Sheep Dogs. I have no idea where because they just about overflowed the house. There was someone else whom we never· met but who heaved his empty food tins into our yard when the -spirit mo~ed him. Our eighth neighbour, also on this boundary, is another Greek family with three generations. They are extremely pleasant people, but they are trying to sell the house at present because they want to go back to Greece and ... set up a food store.

I will tell you quickly about one more neighbour. He lives across the street and we know him as "Bluey". He is about sixty and has been in varying parts of Prahran for forty years, and in our street for twenty-five. His wife is dead and his neice keeps house for him. He has a wonderful vegie garden. He breeds huge numbers of canaries out the back and also quail and he keeps ferrets in his garage. He goes to the country every couple of weekends to give them a run.

This may all sound trivial,certainly parochial, but I do not believe that it is trivial. I hope you do not either. It is f.ar more difficult to plan for this sort of mix of people than it is to accommodate the typical set up of two parents, two kids, two cars and a labrador. Any discussion of the inner suburbs today must take account of the fact that these suburbs are not homogeneous. It is a hackneyed phrase but they really are melting pots. Equidistant from my house is a bunch of Housing Commission high-rise blocks and some extremely plush, expensive South Yarra houses. Just up the road is Toorak - all a part of the City of Prahran and thus of the inner suburbs. How can you possibly develop any unified, coherent planning policy to cover streets of grand mansions, ordinary houses, nineteenth century workers' cottages, rows of horrible 1960s flats with concrete yards and not enough car parking and Commission high rise estates. The answer is you cannot. You need a variety of approaches for a variety of situations. The inner suburbs demand tremendous vigilance from the local councils who have the first say over their administration and they demand flexibility from the superior planning authorities, particularly, the Board of Works.

The percentage of Melbourne's population accounted for by the inner suburbs is falling, as Dr Davison said - as fewer houses are being removed to make way for higher density flats, as people have fewer children, as houses are pulled down (this has happened in my block in South Yarra, for car parking and open space), as boarding houses are required for single occupancy.

There is still in my experience a very good feeling of neighbourliness and community in the inner suburbs and this is promoted by the mix of people living there. The physical make-up of the suburbs has a lot to do with this. You can hardly ignore your neighbour, when you share a common wall, when he is sitting on his verandah as you walk past, when your cat takes up day­ time residence in his sunny back bungalow and gets locked in every night when he forgets about it. .17.

Likewise narrow streets - which are typical of parts of most inner suburbs although by no -means of all - add good relations with the neighbours - you can exchange the time of day across the street, commiserate over parking problems, chat to each other's kids.

Professor Jan Gehl from Copenhagen, who has spent time at the School of Architecture here for the .past two years, has said to me that the relationship of houses to each other in Melbourne's inner suburbs is one hundred percent desirable in terms of modern living. So, too, is their closeness to the street, when they are not hidden behind high fences. These houses may have been called s·lums once and they still may be by many people but this relationship, he said, is what architects and designers are trying to achieve in Europe in new housing developments - and I think here to if the newest ones are any guide.

In my experience, you do not feel alone or cut off in the inner suburbs - people are close, shops are close, open space is close, although I must admit some inner suburbs are short of it. In my part of Prahran, however, we are very fortunate.

I was worried when I left ful~time work six months ago to spend all my time at home. I thought I might become bored or worse, neurotic. No chance! I am reminded of a book called, "Brian's Wife, Jenny's Mum", put out a couple of years ago by some women who too~ Adult Education courses at the Diamond Valley Learning Centre. Let me read you a short extract from this book, which was written by a woman living in an affluent outer suburb and I quote:

"Around 8 am the first purring of powerful engines is heard as the big cars begin rolling on _to the grid for the morning lap of the executive grand prix and the whiff of Supermix rolls up the hill as the Chargers, Monares and Falcons streak away. Some forty minutes later the chatter of childish voices is heard as the small cars line up for the school and kinder scramble - much banging of doors and grinding of gears as the Simcas, Volkswagens and Mini? rattle off to deliver their small passengers to the halls of learning. By 9.15, all is quiet in the street again. This is_ the limbo of the lonely women, the Valium-takers of the Yarra Valley. Automatic washers and appliances make short work of the daily chores and there are six long hours to fill before the children come home and three more before the big cars roll in and life returns to Park Drive".

I do not think you would find scenes like this in most of the inner suburbs. You may find amazing scenes of course, with elem3nts like violence and domestic discord as occurs in households at all levels of society. You will probably also find bored housewives. I may be naive but I do not believe you will find quite that empty hopelessness, that vacuum of despair.

Jane Jacobs in her book, -"The Death and Life of American Cl:ties", isolates one good point of living in the inner suburbs. She writes of the concern that is felt for others - what she calls "the eyes on the street". I find that my neighbours watch out for me. They will say if something unusual happens. we were away for the weekend once and when we got back, Reg up the road as I passed him on the way to buy·the milk, wondered what the police had been doing at our house that weekend. Apparently a police car had drawn up lateoneafternoon and a posse of policewomen and men had rushed into our yard. Well, it took us some time and quite a few telephone calls to discover from our friendly police force exactly why they had called. Nothing serious - but if Reg had not told us, we would not have known. I do not feel abnormally w~r·ried at the thought of leaving our house for a while because I feel sure that if anything untoward should happen, some one would notice and tell us. .18 •. -..":_: ..... In our streetr we talk and think a lot about traffic. If there is a single element which not only bedevils but threatens the quality of.life ·in the inner suburbs, this is it. We do not use our car when we mov·e around loco:ally. My husband goes on his bike and I take a shopping trolley. Marvellous devices, shopping trolleys - pollution-fr~e, not difficult to '.; park, hand.y· for accommodating children or dogs, as well as shopping. The rattle.of their wheels along the pavement is the most characteristic noise around where I live.

Geographically, of course, the inner suburbs cannot escape traffic and nor should .they expect to. It is inevitable that people travelling to and from the city must traverse the .inner suburbs but they do not stick to the main road. When the main roads are clogged, and they nearly always seem to be, .they seek short cuts~ Even if they are heading for a freeway which should speed their jourpey, they seek a short cut. . '· .. , !· .. With these big overtuned cars racing down our streets, which were not built to accommodate them, they are by driving far too fast causing real danger to pedestrians, children and animals. All we can do is shake our heads in amazement. A street blockage was put in not far from our house a few months ago and while it has achieved its aim of reducing overall traffic problems, it has doubled the number of cars passing our front gate each day. I guess that is our bad luck. Few of these extra cars appear to be locals. They are snarly shoppers or commuters looking for a way out.

Getting into our drive becomes a major hazard as cars sweep around the corner, screech to a holt and then swear at you as you complete the quite legitimate business of putting away your car. Resident parking permits, of course, are a fact of life now in most inner suburbs. We do not qualify as we have off-street parking. So the choice is between getting sworn at which can really cloud your day or getting a parking ticket.

People who live in the inner suburbs must expect an increase in traffic. We .. all have to live with the car but not to the degree that is being felt around the Eastern Freeway in Clifton Hill, Collingwood and Carlton, where the rumble of heavy trucks wakes some locals from 4 a.m. onwards, when fumes mean constant heaviness' in the air, where people have had to move their bedrooms to get away from the hum of the traffic, where the tall lights on the freeway are there flashing at you ~11 night, where would-be freeway travellers hare down side-streets to find they do not take them to the freeway and either do a screeching U-turn or reverse at high speed all the way back up the street.·

Commuter traffic should be seen by planners as visitors in residential streets and not as a permanent fixture. We are used to it of course. The silence around our way on public holidays, Saturday afternoons and Sundays is so· accute it is almost deafening. Y9u almos·t feel you are spending a . weekend in the country.

This paper asks for a personal view of the inner suburbs, so summing it up, what do I think?

For me, personally, the inner suburbs are the city. I get twitchy when I go too far·out. They are stimulating and fun. Close handy to shops, sports-grounds, parks and gardens, theatres. Public transport is generally good - a car is really not a necessity if you travel only between your house and the city or if you can walk to work. When there is a strike and you work in the city, you can walk to work - I have done it. .19.

There is little.of the monotonous sameness that I find in the middle and. outer suburbs, attractive and commodious though they certainly may be. I have often noted among people who do not live in the inner suburbs, a kind of smug condescension, an attitude that inner suburban people are stirrers who want it all their own way.

We do hear a lot about the young professionals, who have moved into these suburbs. I suppose I am one myself, but, after ten years in the one spot, I am starting to feel like an old inhabitant. Many recent arrivals are activists.I am not quite sure what to make of the activist phenomenon, even though I have been observing it professionally for some time. I think it contains more than a little self-interest. I think at least some of the activists are far more concerned for their oWn individual convenience than for the good of their area as a whole. I note that few of the older inhabitants and even fewer migrants take any real part.

Yet I am also sure that unless interests within the inner suburbs make their voices heard and unles~ they are listened to, they may be steam rollered by pressures from outside. This is where, as I have said, the local Councils are really important and this is where Councillors n~ed to do more than hire a firm of town planners, who go through the public participation bit with letterbox circulars, public displays, plans, public meetings - it just does not work.

This approach will come up. with answers but are they the right ones, are' they representative of what an area needs? I think not. There has to be another way.

I have to admit that inner suburban living has its disadvantages - traffic, of course; streets which are often dirty, filled with waste paper, rubbish, smashed bottles; transient people in flats and rented houses, who do not care two hoots for the street where they happen to have dossed down; in some areas, a crying lack of space which is needed so badly when yards and houses are small; pollution and disruption from industry in residential areas.

No one dwelling place is perfect, of course, but the inner suburbs have a lot going for them and, by and large, they have pulled out, under their oWn steam, one way or another, of the slump in which they used to exist. They managed, mostly, to survive the Housing Commission but now they face new threats. I hope that commercial pressure to upgrade shopping centres (much better for rate revenue than houses after all) and outside pressure to develop still further the main roads which bisect them does not mean the end of these suburbs' way of life.

This is tenuous, in any case, as the old inhabitants who give so much depth cannot live forever. It is up to· the planners to see that the inner suburbs are allowed to get on with their own life, as they have always done, in their own way. I am not going to go into all the obvious truisms about character, ethnic mix, historic buildings, atmosphere and so on, but all are there - they are great advantages and they need a little careful, tactful protection. .20. DISCUSSION

Speaker: Anne, I was particularly disappoi.nfed, personally, by your inability ,, to understand the activist phenomenon. And definitely disappointed in your feeling that it was ~ather more self than conununity interested. I hope I can assure you that that is not the case.

Mrs Latreille: I did say some of it - not all.

Mr Dunstan: Does Dr Davison think that the peculiar development of some of Melbourne's inner suburbs has anything to do with the extraordinarily demonic rise of football in Melbourne? Did the suburbs in the early days real:ly .loathe eac.h other as much as they appear to have done?

Dr Davison: I said very briefly, and I meant to expand it, that at:the end of the nineteenth century, a process occurred whereby Melbourne's suburbs · began to get defined in terms of images in a way that I do not think they had been before. They got ranked, for the first time, in terms of a status scale. Part of that process of defining a suburban identity was bound up with football and football teams~ So that in that long inter-war period, to be a Collingwood supporter was not only to say that you went along each week, or from time to time to shout for a particular football team but was also to support certain values and certain ways of looking at the world. In that respect, I think that football has been very important. So whether the question was frivolous or not, I take it rather seriously.

Miss Richardson: I live in the same 'street that Anne Latreille used to live in - unfortunately opposite the hotel (mentioned in Anne Latreille's talk). In fact, I bought the house as a woodyard, which has, in fact, become very trendy. I consider that I have been pretty activist. In the four years I have lived in the street, I have become very disillusioned by the. apathy of the local residents.

I wonder how long one can be expected to put up with living opposite a hotel from which emanates tremendous noise from live entertainment, plus the traffic which has been created. I am not hitting at the inner suburbs but I wonder how long one can remain activist and put up with the stress of night after night not having sleep. I would be interested in Anne's corrunents.

Mrs Latreille: I know what you put up with. I know it is terribly difficult. I do not know how one puts up with it, how one does find a way out of your particular situation. Perhaps Cr Rayson (of the City of Prahrani who is sitting next to you, will leap up and bite me when I say this but I think Prahran Council has one hell of a lot to answer for in the case of that hotel, when that expansion was allowed to go ahead. It used to serve the locals, now it is the watering hole of whatever set happens to be in at the time, with the attendant cars and what-have-you. Houses were knocked down to provide the car parking and I think it is appalling.

Cr Rayson: Anne, I will have to answer that. There are six people here from Prahran and not one of us was involved in the council at that time that permit was issued. I suspect that most of the people here are here because of what happened in 1973.

Mrs Latreille: Yes, sure, but that does not alter the facts of . Miss R:i,chardson's problem. ·. Speaker: Dr Davison, with the changes in technology for industry, do you see a time when residential development might begin to claim back some of the industrial areas?

Dr Davison: I think there may be people better able to answer that one than I can, but it seems to me that we are at about break-even point at the . ·i ..· • 21.

moment in terms of balance. The real fear that some people have is.tha~. employment will contract too· fast rather than not fast enough and that we w;i.11· have·residential areas without particularly blue collar employment. ·I th~nk th~t that is a distinct possibility •. In fact, as you may already know, there are some projects already afoot where old commercial buildings are being renovated for residential .purposes.

Mrs Latreille: Could I make just one point further to Miss Richardson's question. I think possibly the activist thing that I was rapped over the knuckles for earlier is exemplified in what Miss Richardson said. That was self interest, because it has to be, since she lives opposite the pub •. For people who live further down the street, it is not so ..bad, ther~fore, they put up with it. Therefore, there is a place for self-interested .activism as well as for community activism.

l Miss Richardson: Cari I just make one poirit regarding that. In fact, I have had many a petition not only about the noise from the hotel but also about heavy traffic in the street. I have tried to do both. I have go~e to the Liquor Control Commission and to the Prahran Council.

Mrs Latreille: Perhaps it is both sides. .22.

MANAGEMENT OF THE INNER SUBURBS

Cr Andrew Mccutcheon

Because of Anne Latreille's superb piece on the area in which she lives, I am tempted just to say I think I have spent most of my life in the inner suburbs. I lived in South Yarra and Prahran when I was a kid and went to school there. Having gone to university, I mulled around Carlton. In post-university days, I have lived in Collingwood and Abbotsford. When I first got into Collingwood and into local politics, I was called a "Johnny-come-lately" and it took me about 7-10 years to start to come to grips with that sort of tag. I think a lot of the interests in the inner suburbs .. are the sort of conflict of territory and interests, and competing groups of people, some of which Anne touched on. Probably, and in some ways·, I· will give some more. information on that but I have to speak about management and the political arena of the inner city.

The brief I was given really requires the next four hours of the progranune but I am supposed to fit it into half an hour. It covers issues of what are the main problems of the inner suburbs and what are some of the aspects of management of these. I will try to give a fairly cursory coverage - perhaps it will be the temptation of most speakers today to do that - but it is very hard to try and cover the problems and get into each one of them in any depth. But the inner suburbs, and I think some of the earlier speakers have already painted this scene, have got this confusion and complexity and conflict - of policy;of responsibility, of process, of decision-making. There are conflicting interests in'different groups, whether they be industry and commerce or residents, and quite different values are held within those groups. So you have low-income residents and middle income residents, you have conservationists and.people who could not care less about conservation, you have people wanting to invest in the inner suburbs, you have people wanting to pass through them and use them as a trail from one place to another. A lot, as we saw with earlier speakers, stems out of the growth of our major metropolis and the fact that back in the early days of Melbourne, people could never have foreseen the patterns and uses that would be demanded at this late stage in the 20th century.

The last sort of problem, I think, is the one that I am really supposed to be talking about - that is, how can these sorts of issues be decided, who should decide and on what basis.

We will just look at some of these questions in a little more detail. Already we have had quite an emphasis on traffic and Anne Latreille mentioned the individual problems of a street in Prahran. But traffic does dominate the complete ring of inner suburbs, the bay-side and the beach areas on the south of the Yarra, it divides north and south Collingwood, Fitzroy and Carlton at the entrance for the Eastern Freeway. Freeways have taken some of the creek valleys and threaten others. We even-have a freeway parked on the edge of the one main river in the city. We have had an incredible emphasis on using the motor car and the roads to solve our mobility problems in the last 30-40 years. We have forgotten the early history of the city, which built railways and trams and public movement systems and as the car suddenly shot over the horizon, particularly ~n the post-war era, our Governments. failed to provide and, I suppose, the voters did not demand of Governments, an equally balanced approach to transport such as we had been able to enjoy up until the last war. ·, Another characteristic or problem of the inner city which has not been ~eferred to so far is the expansion of institutions. From very early in the development of Melbourne, there were major institutions, universities, colleges, hospitals, much wanted by the community and, in fact, expanding very fast because of public demand, but because they are in the built-ap part .23. :.".

0£ the city, their expansion problems start to affect the territory and uses about them. So we have seen hospitals wanting to take up · surrounding residential and conunercial properties to expand their faciiities. The Royal Women's Hospital beside the University, Royal Melbourne Hospital, St Vincent's, the Children's Hospital - they have all faced that problem and local conununities nearby have· felt the threat of that institution wanting to expand its services and its territory.

The University itself has grown incredibly since the 19SOs and probably trebled the'number of students. It has flowed over into Royal Parade and Parkville and to the other side of Carlton and consumed'· properties arid is now actually building for its own purposes outside what has been the traditional boundary of the University from its earliest days. More recently, there have been expansions of RMIT and new institutions lobbing into the area, such as the Lincoln Institute and the Early Childhood . Development Colleg~.-~

Now that is a problem. How are those institutions to be coped with? How are they to be acconunodated? Who controls the impact they have round about? They genera~e a lot of traffic, particularly ones which have students or other daytime visitors. They quite often affect the demand for residential properties and they make other use of other conununity facilities in nearby locations.

Another sort of problem is the thirst for investment and development. There certainly is a large section of the'conununity which wants to protect its investment in building and land and to increase that investment and its value, to renew it, to knock it down and re-build it. That has been a constant characteristic of Melbourne right from the very earliest days. There have been developers and investors there right from the very beginning and Melbourne has always been a scene for that sort of activity - and it still is, with mild hiccups in the last few years. And it will continue to have that sort of pressure on it, for land and opportunities to invest. Hopefully, in the service of the conununity, it will want to use those buildings. But there is a conflict now and various viewpoints as to whether we should demolish existing buildings or whether we should rehabilitate them and reuse them. Whether, in fact, that which replaces some of the older built environment is an adornment and an addition or whether or not, it is degradation of much of the sort of environment we may want in our city. In the residential areas, we have seen the impact of that high-powered investment, in areas like St Kilda or Caulfield, where flat development, before adequate controls were available to the local councils, has meant the most extraordinary development of flats which have dictated the modern-day character of that area as opposed to its earlier characteristics.

I want to say something too about the problem of the existing Board of Works Planning Scheme. The inner suburbs were not planned· and built under the Board of Works Planning Scheme Ordinance. It was implemented in 1954 and it really tried to sununarize what existed in the inner city and give it some sort of zoning status, so that the planning scheme could be oper?ted taking into account the existing uses. Now, from,my experience in Collingwood and in the view of my Council, it appears that in many ways the zonings that were given to the City of Collingwood in the 1954 plan have really been very insensitive to the mixture of buildings and activities ·. which Anne Latreille talked about. So we have general industrial zonings in which an incredible proportion of the housing stock is contained but it has no protection under a general industrial zone. So, someone who wants to develop a factory can, without any prohibitions at all, demolish a house, once he has bought it and built a factory. There is no way in which the Council and the community has any way of protecting this housing stock in .24.

... its ·resident;i.al area or in the mixed areas so characteristic of the inner suburbs.

So, we have had a plann.ing scheme, which in many ways has not been sufficiently sensitive to the environment and the building and social fabric that have been there. There.has been some serious diminution of some of the valuable housing stock of inner Melbourne.

A remark has been made about the decline of the resident population - I think Irvin Rockman mentioned that - that there has been a destruction of a certain amount of housing stock. There has been a change in the number of people inhabiting each unit and a decline, overall, of the inner city population and there.is certainly a change in socio-economic characteristics~ The;re have been various community attitudes to the inner suburbs over the years which .. were also mentioned earlier. They were regarded as slums and the housing stock was seen as of very little value. For a time in the mid 1950s and 1960s the Housing Commission wanted to demolish something like 1500 acres of the inner suburbs, believing it was in the community interest.

So, the value of the housing stock over the years has changed dramatically, largely due, I think in the first place, to the efforts of the migrant community who came out here and grabbed the opportunity to have a house and refurbish it and suddenly this helped the old Australians become aware of what a valuabl~ housing stock it was (or is).

Another problem or issue is how can you change a use that has been there for such a long time? I am referring to as an example, the industrial use along the west bank of the Yarra. From Dight's Falls downwards, as Dr Davison indicated, was the location for a lot of the early industrial trades - soapmakers, fellmongers, wool scourers ..••. They parked themselves on the Yarra bank where they could get water and transport. A lot of these trades are still there, dominating the banks of the Yarra in what is perhaps some of the most prime urban land in the middle of our city. It has two effects: it means that the community behind that industrial wall is cut off from the beauty of the Yarra and from access to the Yarra - and to the view of the east side, which is in some parts national park and in other parts very beautifully planted residential gardens - so, it is a great loss; and it also means the Yarra is split down the middle, with an industrial blackberry wasteland on one bank and reasonably tended and rather beautiful gardens on the other bank. I definitely think there is a major problem there which needs concerted community action.

I think we have also to talk about administrative and management aspects of the inner suburbs. I would like to come back to that particular problem. We inherited a pattern of local government which has come from the very early stages of League football teams. Most of the League teams that are playing today have their local council and represent a community focus from the turn of century to this period. As I raised the question before, we do have to start thinking much more clearly on how the problems are going to be managed and how the issues are going to be resolved •

• Another problem which I think is a seriously neglected one is that of the quality of representation in decision-making, currently, of the people who are residents and workers of the inner suburbs. There are very few ethnic people involved in local government and the ethnic groups that have in fact inhabited, in very large numbers, the inner suburbs have been a very high proportion of the population of the inner suburbs in the last 20 or 25 years. It is absolutely woeful that so little opportunity has been given to them for representation or encouragement for them to take part in the public decision-making process. . 25.

There is a Greek Mayor in the City of Fitzroy. We did have a Greek Mayor . in Collingwood last year but it is a very unusual thing an~ I think the general representation of the various migrant groups that were referred to earlier is really ~ tragic indictment of our interest in how decisions are made and who is going to make the decisions and who holds the power in our sort of society.

So we do have an incredible pot-pourri of conflict, of values, of interests and concerns - some of them very much community-based and some of them very ...- much self-interest-based.

The other half of the problem, which I will try and weld together, is very necessary to enable proper management of these problems and issues. Certainly the inner suburbs have a characteristic of change and almost constant change and I guess .this is. a very healthy and lively aspect but there is always this new thrust and new values and challenges to people who think they are settling down- to being the top dog, or are the most nume:r:.ous, or· have the loudest voice or the greatest say in local politics. My wife did a study in Fitzroy in the mid 1960s and I think 80% of the population at that time was overseas born. Gertrude Street was lined with clubs with the signs outside in all the southern European languages - Macedonian clubs, Greek clubs, Yugoslav clubs. The change in Fitzroy in about a decade is incredible. First of all most of those clubs and shops have gone (but not all of them). Secondly, the population that is now there is very much middle class Australia~, except for the Housing Commission estate, which is very large and very mixed in its racial participants,

Skills are needed in this management process and I do not k~ow that anyone has the answer to the sorts of skills tha~ are needed. Certainly, with the change in population and the coming of middle class professional people to the inner suburbs, there has been an influx of skills at a community level which has enabled many of these problems and issues to be much more clearly pinpointed and articulated than they were prior to the middle 1960s.

I think that is an important thing. It has provided the inner suburbs with the capacity to put their arguments and to make their case, to argue it publicly, and to start to develop support and political clout on issues which, in the past, have just been ridden over and ignored.

When I was first involved in Collingwood, the Housing Commission was at the height of its slum reclamation process and it was involved in block clearance and the erection of walk-up flats. This eventually led to high !ise flats but there was not the capacity in the local councils to really feel or anticipate the issues. Perhaps it is a bit hard to blame the local councils for not anticipating - I do not think anyone anticipated the final force of the impact of high rise housing as an environment for families with young children.

I think the same thing applies when we are talking about the impact of freeway traffic. The process of planning for freeways is very long and drawn out, perhaps 7-10 years, and it is only when the freeway is actually constructed that people start to see the· dimensions of it; and when there is one ope.rating somewhere else, you can start to see the traffic effects of it. Then the community can really start to articulate its fears and try to anticipate the impact of perhaps 70,000 vehicle per day coming into a road like Alexandra Parade, which up until then had no major connections and really was almost local traffic only.

In trying to put the case and articulate the arguments and draw attention to the consequences of Government decisions, it has been a slow process where communities, people and councils have been learning how to put their case, learning how to really understand the impact of decisions that have been made sometime previously. .26. I Now local government, according to our descriptions of 'government, is a third tier and we have Federal and State Governments all very well entrenche.d in their areas of responsibility and their basis for operation is very ciearly defined. It seems that local government is almost the tailend of what is left over and I think one of the things that is imf>ortant is that local government needs to have a much more clearly spelt~out area of operation and clarification of the rights, a bill of rights for local government. I.believe that State government, particularly, has to recognise the role and the right of local government far more clearly than it has to date. This acknowledgement is not recognised. I remember at the height of the freeway argument last year, Fitzroy and Collingwood Councils actually held a Council meeting on the steps of Parliament House as a way of saying to the State Government that they were in fact a legitimate level of government. We we~e trying to say government should be dealing with the issues and trying to thrash them out. We have some good things tQ say. We have some important policies which are not just P.arochial in their origin. They are city-wide, community interest problems and we do want them properly dealt.with, government to government.

I still believe local government is the ugly sister and does not have a true role yet in the process of decision-makin4, particularly in relation to the problems I have outlined. A lot of people have talked about devolving power and decision-making down the line and getting decision-making closer to people in communities. Whenever that is said, there is a great rush of people who say, "well, that becomes impossible and you will never get any decisions made. The process will take three times as long and will end up in confusion".

I believe we have a long way to go in bringing issues out into a much more open process and realiy bringing decision-making far closer to the communities and people who are going to be involved in the results of those decisions~

We might ask, what is good management? How are we going to get good · management of these very complex problems? From a local government point of view, I have seen communities very upset and concerned about some local issue but if they are placed in a position when they have to make-a decision, then they start the business of accommodating the diversities of view within their own ranks. There is some important wisdom in this and I am a great advocate of consultative government, government that does put up information for the electorate, does provide opportunities for the electorate to understand and comment and choose.

In the end, a level of government does have to make a decision and does have to carry the can for what it decides but it is possible for that decision to be much more openly based and open to the needs of the people that are g~ing to live with the decision'.

There are quite a lot of. things we can say about that process but 'we"come up against the fact that so many of the Acts which control our public authorities give the power to that authority, whether it be the CRB, the Board of Works,j the Housing Commission or the Education Department, and there is only a tacked­ on requirement in the legislation saying that that authority should consult ~ with local government. Now there have been some classic cases in which that consulting process has really meant making an appointment with the council and at least laying the agenda on the table and maybe there can be no agreement and no sensible discussion on the issue but in terms of the ·requirements of the Act, there has been a consultation. • .27.

There is a classic case of one inner suburban council which was required to.consult with the Housing Coimnission before they could go ahead with a slum _reclamation proposal, refusi_ng to _meet :With them and that meant that the processes of the Act had not been complied with and the slum reclamation pr6cess·could not be proceeded with and the government then. decided that the authority should be given a certain time and if the council did not duly consult within that time, it should be taken that the consultation had taken place. In that sense, local government has very little say in the process and very little power or right in the process and that is fairly general across the range of semi-government and government authorities, which do have the chance to make very considerable impacts on the inner suburbs.

Another aspect of discussion.when local government and its role in this management process comes up is the discussion, which is now fairly elderly in Melbourne, of amalgamation. During the 1960s, .Melbourne City Council initiated quite a·number of studies and Frank Rogan, I think, produced at least two reports on proposals to amalgamate all the inner ring of suburbs under a greater Melbourne council.

Most of the arguments at that stage were ones concerning the benefits arising from economies of scale and the Rogan report went into this in some detail and showed that you could buy much more efficient road building equipment and it could be used 24 hours a day instead of two or three hours a day to achieve greater economy for the benefit of the ratepayers of the greater Melbourne area. At that stage in the 1960s, very little consideration was given to the issues of local identity, of social organisations, of the quality of areas that do have a name and an historic focus and yet in the 10-12 years, in which those reports were circulated and rejected, I think we have seen quite a change in our understanding of the role o.f local government. There has been a resurging interest in it as a means of reflecting local communities' views despite the poll reported in the Age this morning - L think those figures you have seen in the Age poll that state a consider~ble number of people do not believe you can have any influence on loca~ government, probably exclude the inner city area or it is an average figure which does not take account of the inner city characteristics.

I think there are'a lot of arguments about amalgamation and there are a number of alternatives to amalgamation and a number of these are in fact being developed right now. In order to preserve community focuses and allow local communities to continue to have repr~sentation and a say in the process, I believe alternatives to amalgamation should be very strongly considered. It is possible for the Local Government Act to be altered, so that local government areas can co-operate on a number of areas of their responsibility without, in fact, completely amalgamating the whole process. A great number of co-operative things which local government might choose to do now are very difficult because of the nature of the Local Government Act in its present state.

Even so, the bayside suburbs met and aired their views very strongly last year and early this year on the traffic effects of the; West Gate Bridge being opened. Regional libraries have been developed and are a demonstration of how local government can co-operate to provide really very greatly improved services to people and the combined resources are more than any single municipality could have on its own. There is currently a Northern Suburbs Transport Planning Group which is looking at improvements to public transport linkages for their areas from Fitzroy, Collingwood right out to Preston and further ends of that particular northern area. - It is amazing the simple things which can be suggested which can greatly increase the flexibility of existing public transport routes and make links which provide .28.

far greater.variety of access. That sort of grouping of local government units I think is making a significant move.

Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy have a Standing Committee on Welfare and Housing which, in one sense, has been prompted by the fact that the family and community services activities of the Social Welfare Department allow a number of issues of regional significance to be discussed and proposals developed. Councils along the Maribyrnong Valley have got together and looked at ways of improving the Maribyrnong Valley in conjunction with the Board of Works.

You can go on outlining ways in which local government units can co-operate on issues which are wider than the localised boundaries.of one council. But legislation does require·modification to allow these things to develop in a much rnor.e constructive and ·more creative way. Also, legislative changes should be made to the powers of State authorities so that they have to do more than formally consult with local government. . ' rf the process of proper consideration of some of those complex problems is to be undertaken, then all. these major authorities, which at the moment can completely roll local government, must be required by these modifications to really get down to a much more detailed process and combine the decision-making processes within a suburb.

Just two remarks to close on. 'The experience that illustrates the ineffectiveness of local government when it gets together was shown when nine councils in the early 1970s combined along the route of the F2 freeway and they sought to put their views to the Government, requesting that the whole route of the F2 freeway should be publically displayed, that not just one Council at a time be dealt with so that an agreement was made, which then pointed the gun at the next council and they had to accept where the F2 was corning in over their boundaries. The next part of the process went on as a sort of domino line, falling on one council after the other. Deputations were made to Mr Hunt and he received and discussed the matter but in fact the processes went on because the only legally chartered bodies in that whole process were the inidivual local councils, and the State. authorities were only able to deal officially with the individual local government authorities. so, even the attempts of councils to present a regional view or come to a more rational overview of the whole process, were rendered impossible.

The last comment I want to make is that in the recent amendments and changes to the Board of. Works, the Goverrunent set up four Area Commissions and I think it is worth stopping on this particular point, because that is, I think, the first time that areas of local government have got a legally enacted base to operate on. It will be very interesting to see what happens now that there are four Area Commissions legally enacted and given the chance as local councils to discuss and take part in the process under the auspices of the Board of Works, and that is in strategic planning and drainage, sewerage, water supply and other major issues affecting those councils including transport planning. It will be very interesting to see whether these Area Commissions can use that new base and gain recognition for it as a base for dealing with government and with the Board. Some of the Area Commissions have already come to grips with the possibility of this. The Area Commission to which I belong has already discussed the Park Street corridor across the north of Fitzroy and Carlton and it is going to discuss the impact of the West Gate Bridge next week. it is going to look at the moving of the cattle sale ·yards to Derrimut and the impact of that on surrounding areas of Sunshine at a site v.isi t next week.•

So, here is a sense in which the sixteen councils in the Central and Western Region can come to grips with problems •. They can have representatives from the Board's planning department present to give them information and .29.

they· c'an start to formulate their views and have a base on which to represent .. them . So, I think, that might be the one ray of hope I see, in.that it is actually an enacted piece of legislation. I hope that there will be lots of other changes that enable far more initiative and productivity to come from local government and combine groups of councils in the ways I have outlined. Thank you very much. .30.

GOVERNMENT POLICY ON THE INNER SUBURBS

The Hon A. J. Hunt, • M.L.C •

~Chairman, my assiduous shadow, John Cain, M.P., and ladies and gentlemen. Your reference to my previous term brings to mind a meeting to which I went recently where, when the councillor was giving the vote of thanks, he purported to tell the audience what had recently occurred and to take them behind the scenes of Cabinet and he said when the Premier had almost finished reshuffling the portfolios, he came to the end and said, "Now, who is going to take planning?" - and Alan Hunt was the only bastard to put up his hand. I can assure you it is not true but it is a. challenge to be back in the portfolio again • . ·, Referring to Andrew's comments about· the exhibition of the F2, I would like to take you behind the scenes there as well. On that occasion, I had been convinced by arguments long put forward that public participation needed to commence at an early enough stage to be effective and I took the view that when the Country Roads Board or any other authority had completed the process of reducing its seven alternative routes to three, and from th~se three, choosing a preferred route.and putting it on exhibition, the aye was almost cast and that public opinion, public participation, had less opportunity of achieving results. So, for the first time anywhere that I can find, what we exhibited, not by way of formal exhibition, but for the comment of the three councils, was the last three preferred routes. I remember.Andrew congratulating me on that course. Did the Brunswick City Council do so? NQ, indeed. The Brunswick City Council said you are putting three sets of people to grave concern, you are stirring up three lots instead of one. We do not think that is fair!

Well, times have changed. Mr Gobbo, Q.C., as he then was, in the Gobbo Ieport took the same view as the Brunswick City Council and said it was unfair to put several alternative proposals on exhibition and disturb a number of sets of people and create planning blight over three areas. That policy has been accepted by the Government and perhaps that is, in some senses, a pity. Maybe we could, at earlier stages, perhaps exhibit concepts.

At the meeting on regional planning to which the Chairman referred, I unveiled a little model policy on housing and planning and I think it is worth repeating the story, although a few here undoubtedly heard it on that occasion. I said I had developed a policy which, if delivered with the right measure of sincerity and declamation, could assist to win any candidate in the metropolitan area pre-selection for any party. It does not matter today whether it is Labor, Liberal or more possibly, Australian Democrats, and once pre-selected, it would assist to sweep him on to victory. It goes like this. "I want a home of his own for every Australian, on a quarter of an acre at the least, and we must stop this urban sprawl and bring down the cost of housing and land which has become exorbitant and get people out of the motor car and back on to public transport!"

You know, when you think about it, that little policy does encapsulate conventional wisdom and popular attitudes and shows up our ambivalence, our failure to appreciate that our objectives are often inconsistent or that although differing objectives may each have something worthwhile, there are inconsistencies that need to be reconciled but without that, policies become impossible to implement because we are pursuing differing objectives at the same time.

I think, in most respects, our planning policies have been fairly clear and yet in other respects, they have been inadequately so. It has been clear since 1968, for 10~ years now, that the future growth of Melbourne was to be confined within corridors, and Statements in 1974 and 1975, further refined . 31.

those concepts. But there have been changes that indicate that with the passage of time,. there needs to be not a change of directiop but a change of emphasis. Looked at in the light of the changes that have taken place over the last few years, one sees that there needs to be a reduction in the emphasis on outer growth and an increase in the emphasis on inner refurbishing and redevelopment • • What .are the changes that bave occurred? Well, firstly, there has been a marked economic slowdown in.recent years. There have been factory closures in the inner areas and many. factory premises are unutilised or inadequately utilised. There has been a progressive erosion of )ob opportunities, particularl~ for those referred to, as blue collar workers, in the inner city and the. · inner suburbs. ·There have been green bans which have slowed the process further and there has been t.be work of preservation,· which we perhaps · ~· inadequately.unders~ood and which has sometimes.gone further than the need which realiy existed· in slowing down.the process of redevelopment. Then again, some of our· freeway proposals have inevitably attracted people to outer suburbs. The opening of the Johnston Street Bridge and the prospective opening of the West Gate Bridge will take people who formerly travelled through the city, fortunately, away from it. The development of regional shopping centres has reduced the comparative importance of the central business district as a retail shopping centre and yet a countervailing force is present in that the loop will, it is hoped and believed, assist to bring people back to the central city.

There have been other changes too, ~n that rising house prices and high interest costs and an increasing deposit gap have made the dream of many people to have a 20 square home on a quarter of an acre at the least in the outer suburbs, something that has to be at least postponed and that fact alone has brought an increasing interest in the inner suburbs. So, too, has zero population growth put an end to the old. predictions of rapid outward growth of Melbourne. The downturn in immigration has done the same thing and yet, I think, it is still worth noting that in Melbourne there are still approximately 16,000 new household formations per annum.

It may seem strange to some that household formations continue de.spite the fact of a static population. But net household formation will, in fact, continue for approx.iinately 20-25 years, following the· reach~ng of a static situation in any population, because young people are growing older and they marry while their parents are still alive. That 16,000 homes, ·I think, dropped to 12,000 in one recent year but it is averaging out at 16,000 and seems to be likely to continue to do so. Increasingly, people are looking to the inner suburbs and the middle suburbs. Not only the inner core, which we are predomin~'bely talking about this evening, but those just a little further out as well. Many too are concerned about a looming energy crisis and of a prospective shortage of fossil fuels and they are amongst those who seek, wherever practicable, to find a home close to their work place.

We have seen the young professions in particular, by choice, selecting the inner suburbs as the place where they desire to live. That, too, has had a side-effect in that property values have been increased and many who formerly formed part of the blue collar workforce have found that it is uneconomic for them to remain and they are forced to look further afield.

Well, these I think are factors that we have to recognise as increasing emphasis needs to be placed upon refurbishing the inner area. What do we really need to do? Well, we need a partnership with the people, with local government, with regional government in the form of the Board of Works, the State government and with private enterprise to recharge the magnet: to .32.

assist to restore the vitality of the central business district, to use the office space that is available here, to ensure that the entertainment level available in Melbourne is not only maintained but further improved, to assist to make better use of our magnificent network of parks close in. The Royal Botanic Gardens rank with any in the world and the beauty of the river is enjoyed by many every weekend. ·And yet not so far round the city we • have seen areas run down, areas which could be regenerated, rehabilitated, restored and revitalised.

What, I believe, is needed to assist in bringing about that process is a far greater degree of certainty than has existed in the past. A certainty that can .restore confidence and a far greater degree of emphasis on positive rather than negative approaches. Too often the answer has been by one arm of government or another, that this cannot be done rather than the attitude 'being one of seeking to enable steps to be .taken.

Now in some areas, .the steps to be taken need to be towards restoration of the charm and character that has existed for a long ·time. In Parkville, there are areas of enormous character that need to be not only preserved but restored. Co-operation between State government, private owners and local government is clearly needed to achieve that objective - and it will be given. In Drummond Street, Carlton, we have an area that h.as been blotted by development which is out of c~aracter with the streets as a whole and yet that area is still worth being protected, preserved, and where necessary, restored. This can be done by the use of the streetscape provisions under 8, 8A and SB of the Third Schedule to the Town and Country Planning Act.

Councils have complained that the position regarding compensation is unclear and the legislation arising from the Gobbo report will put that beyond any doubt. Meanwhile, I should only add that in areas such as I have mentioned, . there is no net cost by taking appropriate protective steps, as experience at Malden has showed. In historic Malden, many owners complained bitterly about the constraints which they regarded as being placed upon their property when the decision was taken to protect the character of that area and to restore it where necessary. In fact, the net result of those steps has been to protect everybody's values and to increase them far more than the general average applying throughout the community. So, Malden has been preserved, as in. the course of restoration, where damage has been done, the community has gained, the Government has achieved the result and it has benefited the private owners as well.

There are other areas where the need is for sensitive redevelopment. There are many attacks on the Housing Commission and yet I suppose a high proportion of those in this audience tonight have seen the sensitively developed townhouse style project constructed by the Housing Commission in Raglan Street, South Melbourne. It is not a high density development by any means although the density is very substantially greater than the four homes to the acre to which the average Australian is accustomed. And there is ·an enormous amount of scope for such developments in the inner areas of Melbourne and I congratulate the South Melbourne Council for the co-operation it gave the Housing Commission in that project, which I hope can be a pilot. In Carlton, the Housing Commission and the Jennings organisation were engaged in a joint project which has similar value. Private.entrepreneurs have also undertaken sensitive redevelopment in some inner areas.

Yet, if we are to make the utmost use of the facilities which the central area offers - and I nuaan the facilities of the central city itself, together with the existing transport systems that already exist and the existing investment in sewerage and water mains and services of every description - then we must look to higher development again in appropriate locations and .33. that means. inevitably, close to transport nodes near the central citya There must be sc0pe for higher density development close to the city in carefully selected locations. This will assist greatly to make better use of facilities and to avoid our overdependence on the motor car.

There has powever, been resistance to this approach, a resistance based upon the traditional quarter-acre syndrome of the average Australian. The message we need to get through is that the average Australian does not have to be forced to live in a home on a quarter of an acre at theleastbut ought to have a choice - a choice as to whether to live in that sort of development on the outskirts, or in rejuvinated suburbs close to the inner core, or in town houses or restored housing in the inner areas itself, or in appropriately located flat developments, not of a high rise nature but of a somewhat higher density than the town house can provide. . . I . Th~s is where the greatest resistance has occured because of the fact that Councillor~. tend to say, yes, allright, flats are OK in their right place but that is not in my ward and I think that wherever you go, .from municipality to municipality, in the inner core that tends to be the attitude.

I believe that we can use the area system referred to by Cr Mccutcheon to good effect here, by bringing together representatives of councils from inner areas, together with representatives of the Board of Works and of ~vernment to select, consider and exhibit for comment what appear to be the most appropriate locations for flat development.

Cr Mccutcheon will remember that, in 1973, I restored the Councils' full control over flat development. The result I am sorry to say has not simply been greater opportunity for residents to have their say but it has meant, in effect, a virtual stop to flat development in the inner areas, even in appropriate locations because everybody tends to think they should be put · somewhere else.. This needs to be thought through and it will need a regional approach involving representatives of councils, the Board of Works and government. We do need to ensure effective choices.

What I am putting to you is that we not only need to revitalise the magnet, as I referred to before, we· not only need to provide for a greater diversity of choice in the inner suburbs but we need to consolidate the central core. We need to do that, I think, recognising the reduction in the rate of growth of public funds and recognising the increasing public and private costs of servicing a widely dispersed city and making the best possible use of existing infrastructure, community facilities and cultural elements of a city of this kind. We need to pay regard to the need for conservation of energy and to encourage patronage of the public transport system.

Consolidation entails a reduction in the emphasis upon outward growth, the encouragement of innovative medium density forms of housing in the inner. city and the central suburbs, a shot in the arm for the CBD as the prime focus of the metropolitan area, selective and sensitive redevelopment of appropriate areas and great care in the designation of any further subregional centres.

One thing I want to make clear is that consolidation does not imply massive redevelopment of the inner suburbs. That course is simply not open as an option. It is unacceptable to seek to destroy and change the entire character of the inner suburbs: ·unacceptable to municipalities, unacceptable to the people who live in them and unacceptable to the Government. Changes need to be slow, sensible and sensitive. Consolidation does not require the destruction of buildings and areas and streetscapes of historic, architectural and cultural significance. On the contrary, it implies their refurbishing.

I agree.with Cr Mccutcheon that this does require a partnership between every .34.

level of goverrunent. If that partnership is to succeed, however, each arm of · goverrunent must be prepared to see the needs and problems of the other and none will be able to insist pn its own way all the time. The solving of these problems lies in co-operation and not in confronta~ion •

.. .35.

·E:cONOMIC.PATTERNS AND'ALTERNATIVES Dr Michael Jones

I do feel somewhat at a disadvantage at this meeting not having a purist inner suburban Melbourne background which I can quote at the beginning. But I do have some links with Melbourne's inner suburbs because if you live in a place like Canberra, you have to have some diversion to maintain your sanity.

Canberra ironically is of course the fantasy land of planners and engineers where up until very recently they virtually had unlimited money to carry out their plans and, of course, it is the final result of giving a great deal of power to planners.

In the ten years I have been living in Canberra, I have always made sure that I have had jobs which.involved a lot of travelling around Australia. Thus I do not reall.y live in Canberra. I did live in Richmond for a couple of years in the early 1970s but I had to move to Canberra for a number of reasons - and because the Labor Government had got into power in December, 1972, and anyone with a sense of humour had to move to Canberra on that occasion. Also, I just found I really could not do a great deal of work in Melbourne because of a great number of diversions. I have always found Canberra a very reflective and very good city in which to do research, mainly because of the lack of alternatives.

The irony in my position is that in Canberra I live in a suburb, in a Radburn type house, which is probably about 150 yards from any busy road. There is an almost absolute absence of any traffic noise whatsoever. This is ironic .. in Canberra because the big peculiarity about Canberra is, that although it is a city that pays homage to the trees more than any other city, possibly in the world, it is a city, that is dominated by the private car. It has got one of the most magnificent urban speedway systems the world has ever seen. It.is quite magnificent.

My problem was that about a year ago, I could not stand this lack of traffic noise, so I consulted my psychiatrist. He recommended that I live part of the year in Melbourne, - which I did last year. I rented a flat on Punt Road, just near the corner of Bridge and Punt Road. I just could not understand at four o'clock in the morning where all that traffic was going to, but after a couple of days I adjusted to it and it worked very well. I much preferred my flat in Punt Road to my house in Canberra - so that tells you something about modern planning.

I do think that someone who does live in Canberra and who does travel to Melbourne frequently, probably appreciates more than a lot of people in this room just how much stimulation there is in a big city like Melbourne, particularly in the inner suburbs. A lot of people, when they live here, take it for granted but I certainly do not. Walking up and down Swanston Street to me is a fascinating experience.

What I want to do today is to try to get people to see the complexities and difficulties involved in this area. If you look at the history of inner suburban policy in Melbourne, it has been a history of simplicities and therefore disasters, in so many ways, because the inner suburbs in the city are extremely complex. Yet, policy, the nature of policy and politics, is such that it is very ·seduced and attracted by great simplicities .36.

The other difficulty is that a lot of people confuse changes with problems. There is a big difference between a change and something that really forms a public policy problem. I will be stressing that it is one thing to diagnose a situation and it is yet another thing to work out solutions.

Much of this talk by the way is taken from a book by Hal Kendig. The book is called, "New Life for Old Suburbs", and is to be published in January next year. It is by far the best piece of work ever done on inner suburbs in Australia.

I think you can divide the history of inner suburban policy in Melbourne into three stages. The first stage, up to 1930, was where the city was seen as an area for profit with the Government concerning itself basically with providing a fairly minimum infrastructure. In that period, from 1860 to 1890, Australia, according to our economic historians, was the richest country in the world per capita. It was an extraordinarily affluent society at that period of history and yet the Australian economy from 1890 to 1939 was really in a pretty bad way. It had a very low rate of growth and was subject to profound instability on more than o~e occasion. Those factors had a dramatic effect on the inner suburbs but that period was basically the time when the private market was left pretty much to itself.

There is an irony in this because most of the existing inner suburbs in this city grew up at a time when there was very little governmental regulation as we know it today, and yet those inner suburbs built out of pretty much unco-ordinated private greed have, as I will argue later, shown themselves to have extraordinary flexibility and adaptability - far more so than a lot of newer developments with much better intentions and much better planning.

The second period in inner suburban policy was from 1930 to 1960. This was the age of the discovery of the slum. There is a fascinating thesis in the library at this University by Oswald Barnett, who did a Masters thesis in 1931 on the economics of the slum and that became (after it was propagandised) the basis for the slum movements in Melbourne in the 1930s. It is a fascinating thesis if you ever get a chance to read it. It was published in about 1933 under a different title but it is full of pictures of how when he was going around the slums in Melbourne, he found all sorts of ex-clergymen and grammar school boys who had fallen into the evil and debauchery and alcoholism and sexual deviancy of the slum. It is marvellous, in many ways, because it has heavy religious overtones, heavy Methodist overtones, it is very paternalistic and, on the other hand, it does have great seasitivity. The reports produced in that period included the 1937 Housing Commission report, which was, in many ways, a brilliant example of a combination of quite sophisticated methodology with a brilliant eye for propaganda. For an academic, it must go down in history as being one of the most influential theses ever written in this country.

That period of history was a sensitive time - it was a paternal~stic middle class movement. It had a very clear enemy - the landlord. What they did in that report, of course, was to print a list at the back of it of all the owners of slum property in Melbourne. There was an extraordinarily high proportion of politicians and other notables which, of course, created a great deal of interest at the time.

This slum movement carried over and there were some rehousing schemes in it Melbourne in the late 1930s, at Port Melbourne and, I think, at Richmond. .37.

This carried over after the war to such an extent (this movement had spread to Sydney) that around about 1950 or so, governmental reports in Sydney, for example, were recommending that 80% of Paddington would have to be demolished as soon as was possible. Paddington is now one of the trendiest, most expensive parts of Sydney. This was the legacy of that period in many ways, of what happened in the 1930s.

~he great danger in social reform is that people will believe your rhetoric. Of course, the~greatest danger is that you yourself will believe it.

What happened in that period after the war was that there was a great feeling that the· slums were spreading.· This I will argue about later - it was a false theory - but at least this period was sensitive.

NOW what happened? I call the third period in this history from 1960 to 1970. This was an age when organisations such as the Housing Commission, the .old social sensitive people, lost their influence and were taken over very much by the engineers and the technocrats and the administrators. It was the "Golden Age" of.urban renewal which was the physical equivalent of Moral Rearmament. It was epitomised in the 1964-67 report on the redevelopment of Carlton, which is worth reading if.you want to see how insensitive this period was. They planned to knock down most of Carlton. It was the age, in the in-words, of "comprehensive planning". Incredibly, they intended to boost the population of the inner suburbs in that period from 210,000 to 650,000. They intended to treble densities, which was just nonsense for all sorts of reasons. It just was not possibl~.

The highlight of that period as a symbol of this insensitivity was the Housing Commission policy of the sale of land to private developers for the housing of the middle class. This was a scheme where the poor, the low income people were expropriated, by the use of vicious compulsory acquisition powers, developed during the anti-landlord period in the 1930s, and the land was sold at great subsidy to private developers, who then sold to all sorts of middle-class people, some of whom I know and, as I have mentioned, they live in this quite attractive and cheap property. This is the best example I know of a Stalin-type urban liquidation programme but it did highlight and illustrate the tremendous insensitivity, the social insensitivity, of the 1960s in the policy history.

Now the 1970s, I think, is the last period and I call it the. growth of the "city complicated", because there has been an enormous increase in the sophistication and understanding of the processes that operate in the inner city. See some of the in-words, such as "the quality of life"! A lot of people see the struggle over property in the inner city as one element in the class war.

There is a strong defensive element in it in terms of resisting freeways, resisting encroachments. There is also still concern over the declining central city. There is a great contrast actually between the 1960s and the 1970s. In the 1960s, literature was obsessed with the fact that the middle class were moving out of the city: in the 1970s, the literature is obsessed with the fact that the middle class were moving into the city. The message there is that they cannot win: if they are going, they are in trouble; if they are coming back, they are in trouble • • .38.

The middle class, by the way, have been blamed for just about everything that has ever happened in history.

What I thought I would do in the limited time I have available is to run through what I think are some of the issues and some of the key debates • .,, The key message of Hal Kendig's book, and it is a comparative international study which is really very valuable, (he is an American), is that he stresses that the Australian central city is incredibly healthy. Australia is a very, very lucky country indeed to have ·inner suburbs that have involved the public purse in so lit~le expense. There is enormously valuable capital stock in the inner suburbs of Melbourne that has been saved as a valuable and highly used economic resource at very little cost to the taxpayer. This has been something that is quite unique, in many ways to Australia. American cities, because of racial problems, tax problems, and other things really .have become "doughnut " cities. The "doughnut" city is nonsense when applied to Australian inner suburbs. We are extremely healthy, we are extremely lucky and this comes out very well in this .book.

What the book argues, and what I would agree with, is that the problem with Australian cities is that they are over-centralised. There are very few other cities in the world that have such a high proportion of jobs within a close distance from the central city. The central cities in Australia have about two-thirds of all clerical jobs and in the inner suburbs, jobs outnwnber workers by about 3-1. 70% of workers living in the inner suburbs actually work there and about half the jobs in Australian capitals are within the inner 12-16% of the urban area. That is an extraordinarily high degree of centralisation on a world comparative basis. It leads to the argument that the problem with Australian cities is not so much a declining inner city: it is the problem that the cities are too centralised, 'that we have too many jobs down-town and this involves people in such excessive nwnbe~of unnecessary journeys to work. The big analogy there is with shopping. The growth of the regional shopping centre, and so forth, has done the sensible thing: it has taken the shops to where the people live. In many ways, that is the problem of Australian cities. There are a nwnber of factors that meant that ·there are too many jobs downtown.

Certainly, I do not accept the argument of the declining central city. It does not make sense. The only basis you can accept that on is to see the planner as an underwriter. I do not accept that view of planning. Capitalism is supposed to be about risk and if people put their money into central city property with an expectation of high capital gains and if it does not occur, I do not see that it is the function of planning to underwrite that. Canberra, at the moment, is in a situation where they are developing, expected within twelve months, a million square feet of vacant shopping space - which tells you something about the process of planning. There is an enormous over-supply but this is in the private sector and again, these people are bleeting, but I do not see that as the function of planning. Planning is not supposed to underwrite and keep a central city at a profit level and a property value level to which it has become accustomed. I do not see that as a function of public policy at all. Which is different to, say, if you actually had very heavy vacancies and social problems in inner cities or massive obsolescence - that is not the case here at all. When the Bourke Street lobby talk about the need to bring in more people to the inner city, they are talking about an expectation of an increase or a maintenance of property values which has very little to do with any real public policy problem in the inner city. .39.

Again, keeping on the economic side of things, the interesting thing about the slums, or about further development generally, is that there is tremendous underestimation of the importance of income in a city. The growth i~ real incomes in a city is the underlying factor that influences urban areas tremendously,· as much as population. You can have Asian countries with enormous population with very little income and you do not get the urban expansion at all.

The basic factor in post-war Australia in inner suburban history, which is saving the inner suburbs is the fact of very rapid real income growth which is giving people the capacity to pay for this housing. It has given a capacity to renovate it generally without any expense to the public, which has been a tremendous feat and a great achievement, in many ways. People who renovated those houses have done so for self interest but they have also done a great thing for the society in terms of holding, and maintaining that potentially obsolescent and wasted resource.

The growth in income is the underlying factor.for the much talked about decline in population in the inner suburbs. I think that it is not a negative thing but a positive thing. Because of our very healthy economy up until recently, and even now, we are still growing, at the moment we have for the past five years, it has enabled people to improve their housing sp~ce standards. If you look at the 1947-1976 period, there has been a loss of 35% in the population of Melbourne's inner suburbs. About a quarter of that was due to a decrease in occupancy rates in self-contained dwellings, a quarter of that lot has been due to incursions of non-residential uses and about half has been due to the decline in non-self-contained dwellings such as boarding , houses and non-self-contained flats and houses. I see that as being a very .. good thing because it means that people have had the income to enable them to buy better quality housing. I do not see that as a bad thing at all.

If you look at the type of people who live in the inner city, it is what you would expect - people without young children. The proportion of people with young children in the inner city is much smaller than in other parts of the city. There are a lot of people in a pre-family state, particularly with two incomes or single high-income people. There are.also a lot of old people in the inner city.

People have adjusted the limited space available in the houses by using the inner city overwhelmingly for certain stages of their life cycle, where they do not need a great deal of space. So, people are not fools. There is always a heavy paternalist strand in the inner suburban policies.

Peop~e have used the inner city overwhelmingly very sensibly in relation to their needs but a key term comes up in the economics of this area, which is "filtering". I am sure most of you have heard of it and, applied to the housing stock, it simply means that houses can filter up and down through income groups. What has happened in the post-war period is that a lot of houses in places, like Paddington or Carlton in Melbourne, have filtered up. In other words, a higher income group has gone in to them. What happened anyway is that, to a certain extent, those suburbs were merely regaining .the sort of mixture of population that they originally had. The Carltons and the Paddingtons were never overwhelmingly low-income areas at all. They were relatively highly mixed suburbs to start with. A .lot of that filtering is really just regaining the mixture. .40.

I think another important question there too, is the whole question of taste. The term, "gentrification", is one that is thrown around a lot .. these days. It is a British term and Australian cities have suffered a great deal from the translation of a lot of these ideas from overseas. There is an increase, that is shown by Kendig in his book, in the proportion of higher income people coming in to the inner city, but it is still not •· fantastically large in percentage terms. There are still a lot of low-income people in those cities.

What you could argue in many ways, is that it could well be simply a matter of taste if the blue-collar person is quite happy to sell his house in say ·Carlton at a very high price and go and live in Footscray. Well, then, it is not necessarily a bad thing because, in a property market, people who value the urbanity and facilities of the inner city should be the ones who live· there, not the working class, many of w~om do not particularly value the · facilities of the inner cities. It is not a bad thing at all if there is that specialisation by.CU"ea.

A lot of the gentrification argument talks about the problems low-income renters have, which are true~ Any renter in this society is heavily discriminated against in terms of governmental assistance but I do not see how the inner suburban renter in many ways can be singled out for preferential treatment. If we are going to do somethingfor renters, then do it for the low income renters across the board. Do not tie it to the inner city.

I think the essence of the policy for the inner city, an economic view of it, is to see the necessity for choices. Put simply, there is a trade-off in these things. People, if they live in the inner suburbs, have smaller private space. They will be able to do without a.car much better but they have other things to take into account. They have less space but they have shorter journeys to work. People make these trade-offs all their lives.

If you look at people's behaviour, the journey to work is not of paramount importance to most people. Why else do they come up from the Mornington Peninsula every morning on that crazy road. It means it cannot be as bad as people make out. A lot of the arguments to bring people back into the inner city do place great importance on the journey to work, which is the result of the large concentration of jobs in the inner city. If you look at the journey to work position in recent surveys, you will find that, in 1974, half of all journeys to work in Melbourne were less than 24 minutes and three quarters were less than 43 minutes. In fact, there is an ironic thing, if you look at the studies on this, often people in the inner suburbs can have amazingly long journeys to work because they are the ones who· normally catch public transport, which, in many ways, can be very slow. If you are in a private car and you are not coming right into the central city, you can often go quite a long way, even in a place like Melbourne, in half an hour at peak time or certainly in three quarters of an hour. I think that is the irony - that people in the inner suburbs do not often have as short a jol,lrney to work as you might think at first exmmination because they are · physically tied to public transport.

The other key term in economics, in planning, is flexibility. The amazing thing, as I said at the beginning, about Australian inner suburbs, is their extraordinary flexibility. They have seen all sorts of waves and changes. They have been used by migrants. They have been used by the poor and they are now being used, some people argue, by the middle class.

That shows extraordinary flexibility for dwellings and areas that were built last century, basically on the basis of private greed. .41.

I ask you to ask yourself whether you think that the Housing Commission flats not far from here will exhibit that same degree of flexibility. I strongly suggest that they .will not. That raises a lot of important questions .. for planning. /- The great thing about Australia's inner suburbs is that through historical .. and technological reasons there was very little tenement building in Australia. This is mainly what killed a lot of inner suburban rehabilitation . in other countries. A single family house, for all the +ubbishing it gets, is one of the most adaptable forms of housing known. The higher the density, the less flexibility generally yqu have, so any form of multi-unit housing is very hard to renovate. Can you imagine them putting en-suites, hanging from a 20 storey block of flats. It is not an easy thing to do at all. It is a-n extremely difficult and expensive thing to do~ The cheapest thing to do· with that'Q-ype of development is often to demolish it. The inner suburbs, partly by accident, do have treme~dous flexibility.

On demographic questions, I think we have already heard a fair bit of talk about the decline in the rate of immigration in this country. Of course, remember, that in the intercensal period 1966 to 1971, about half the growth of the population in Melbourne was accounted for by overseas migrants. It was a massive factor indeed and that has been more or less cut off now, in net terms. We certainly are not getting anything like the type or numbers of migrants and that must have implications for the inner suburbs. So must the decline .. in the birth rate and probably the declining popularity of marriage. Australia is,in demographic terms, a country where marriage is more popular than any other society in the world. An extraordinarily high proportion of people in Australia marry. · From my own personal observation, there seem to be signs that it is declining. If that continues, of course, it. does have great implications for the inner suburbs because these are the people that come to the inner suburbs.

If you are going to look at the conflict in the inner suburbs, it would be silly to talk of it in simple terms, the way some people do now. They talk about a conflict between the middle class and the lower class - that is the basis in many ways of the gentrification argument. I think that there are a lot of sub-components in the conflict that goes on in the battle for space in the inner suburbs.

One important conflict is between one and two income families. One of the elements of stratification in this society is the number of incomes in the family. It is one of the most underestimated factors that is often much more important than social class: your capacity to pay for housing, your capacity to lead a high income lifestyle, is so dependent these days on having two incomes. Of course, if you look at a lot of the people in the inner suburbs who have beaten up property prices to amazing levels, they very often are those two incomes families. There is a big conflict there between one and two income families and that holds almost independently of socio-economic class, whether it is white or blue collar.

There is another conflict between different types of professionals. A lot of the ".trendy" people who want houses in the inner suburbs, the houses of low income groups and so forth, really are often expressing the jealousy of people like the professions who make money, which I mainly list as doctors and lawyers. There is a big class distinction between doctors and lawyers who have got big money, who have got big incomes, and between people, say, like teachers who just cannot afford this sort of deposit or servic~ng of money. That is a lot of the conflict.

I L__ .42.

There is also conflict between the age and when people bought these houses. What will happen in Melbourne now and the big question is this: with a lot of people currently living in inner suburban properties, if they were in a the market for that house as a new house now, they could not possibly,.afford it! Most of them got into that property when values relative to income were much below what they are now. So the big open question is, ·in ten years time, what will be the composition of the new waves of people who have to buy in at current prices?

Part of the problem in this area, too, is that a lot of the conflict in these suburbs is really over the sociological composition of the suburbs. Even though I like visiting Richmond now, I doubt if I lived in Melbourne full-time whether I would realiy want to live there because the restaurants I go to now in swan Street and so forth are full of people like me - whereas when I was there in 1972, they were full of Greeks and all sorts of people which in many ways gave the area its interest. In many ways, some.of the inner suburbs remind me of Canberra, in their concentration of people like myself - middle class people. Thfs~ in many ways, does raise the question that typically in the past we have thought of planning as only involving land uses but the key part of planning involves the type of people who live in an area. That is really a much more important underlying factor behind a lot of planning rather than actual things' like preservation of property values, which is really the preservation of the sort of person who is going to live next to you. Sociological purity.! What this does raise .is that perhaps planning should abandon thisconcer~orobsession with physical things and try to control the sociological composition of the city. The implications of that would be that if you bought in to,say, Richmond with the expectation of having an urban or a certain mix of population there in terms of the percentage of Greeks and labourers and so forth, then you should be able to complain to the planning authority if you think there are too many trendies moving into the area. There could be a "Trendy Appeals Board", where you could go and put your case and so you could envisage having advertisements for houses saying, "Migrants Only". I think it does raise a problem. It is really, in many ways, the slum in reverse. When you get too many scruffy, deviant people there, you get a slum; when you get too many people of the same high socio-economic status, the area, in fact, loses a lot of its interest to people.

You may think I am joking on this but I think there is a serious point there it is a very hard thing to control. There comes some threshhold above which the inner suburbs, if they do become too middle class, will lose a lot of their interest. I am not sure how that is to be coped with but possibly the market will cope itself. I do believe that with the gentrification argument, a lot of that type of buying is for the better quality houses. I still believe that, in most inner suburbs in Melbourne, there is still a lot of low quality housing, originally low quality, that I do not think is really in that gentrification segment but I cannot really prove that.

I will finish up just by saying that if you look at various waves of policy that have occurred in the past on the inner suburbs, I do not think they have been successful. They existed in a world of great simplicity and i paternalistic moralistic judgements about what people want and what they 1. do not wanto I do not believe that that has been very successfulo I just ask people to try to understand the inner city and proceed with caution in what is a very complex task. Thank you. .43.

DISCUSSION

Chairman: I think you will agree with me that we have had three excellent papers in this session. It is now your turn.

Speaker: Some months ago, the Government announced that the F2 reservation would be removed from the planning scheme. Can Mr Hunt tell us what the most recent situation is?

Mr Hunt: About twelve months ago, the Government abandoned the freeway link south of Bell Street, which meant that no freeway would be constructed. In other words, the nine councils in the area had succeeded in their basic objectives. There was no abandonment of t~e proposal for an arterial road route and the Board of Works has been instructed to complete its final advice to Government very quickly. There are a number who would like to see even an arterial road route abandoned and any reservation whatsoever gone. There are others· who maintain that an option should be retained for an arterial road link and I would expect the matter to be settled this side of Christmas.

Cr Mccutcheon: I think there is one more piece of information on that and that is that Mr Rafferty, the Minister for Transport, did write to a number of Councils, saying that the F2 would not be built and that the Government would make moves to lift the reservation. I think that that was the basis of the question rather than assuming that it would stay for an arterial road reservation.

Mr Forqe, (National Trust): Mr Chairman, it was probable that Mr Hunt would come in for a few knocks today, so I forewarn you.

I might make a comment that it seems to me that a number of points the Minister was making, a number of assumptions, are highly dubious, if not plain invalid. I will list, perhaps, a couple of examples.

The first one has already been touched on, namely, the assumption that the population drop in the inner suburbs is a cause for great concern. I point out that Professor Lawson.came here last year and stated that the pheonomonen was common overseas and was generally regarded as a sign of an increased standard of living.

Another assumption was that more office letting in the city would bring economic benefits. I point out that research in America tends to lead to the opposite conclusion.

Thirdly, there is the assumption that there are many areas in the inner city that are run-down and need restoring and rehabilitation.

Fourthly, the assumption that preservation has gone too far in slowing down development.

Now I do not wish, today, to dwell upon these sorts of assumptions at any great length. I do wish to urge, however, that in my view they are extremely dubious assumptions and they lead to the inference that some of the attitudes of the 1960s and 1950s are still there. There is still a paternalistic view by the outsider.

Finally, I might ask a specific question. The Minister referred to the need to get the city going, restore its vitality. The need to give it a shot in the arm. Can I ask when some initiative will be taken to arrest the system of property taxes? When will we do away with punitive M.C.C. taxes on small buildings - service industries, restaurants, bistros, shops, all the sorts of activities that make Melbourne interesting. The same punitive M.M.B.W. .44.

system and perhaps the most insidious of all, the systero of State land tax, which taxes say the Princess Theatre at the same rate as a 600' office .... tower?

Mr Hunt: I will deal with the assumptions first which Warwick said I had made. I did not even refer to the decline in population: I referred to a loss of job oppo~tunities and I believe that is undeniably true and that has been assisting to driv~ out factory workers and the like •. I refer, for example, to the Yarr~ Falls area in Andrew McCutcheon's own municipality, which is now run down and clearly presents an opportunity for redevelopment of some sort. Something certainly needs to be done with areas such as that. Currently, we are engaged in a stocktaking of what are called inactive zones - ~reas that may have been zoned for factory purposes but where factories have become run-down or other zone? that have-become inappropriate. That may assist greatly to point the way towards some changes of an enabling rather than a restrictive nature there.

When I referred to preservation, it was not to surfeit of preservation but that there had been indecision on preservation of a time-consuming nature, that was very costly. It has caused great trouble to all concerned. People have often bought in good faith after enquiry and then steps are taken to get the building classified and then there are delays. Plans are produced which may maintain a facade or even the major part of the building but enable some development and yet it may be years before a reconciliation is achieved. That is simply not good enough!

Decisions ought to be made vastly more quickly on issues such as that.

So it is in that sense rather than in opposition to preservation of building~, which certainly deserve it, that I made my remarks. There is a need for streamlining of the procedures of decision~making. There are many in the central city who have just been unable to get a decision one way or the other and that has been a stultifying process.

With relation to taxes and land tax. Rates are, of course, a matter for the council concerned and the Board of Works and a working party is currently examining the prospect of differential rating for different types of occupancy. I must say that I .have personally very grave reservations about such a process which could be used to penalise one special group as against another and possibly .used with a very real electoral appeal to whatever was the largest segment. So I do have reservations unless there are very real safeguards. There is a seminar in Newzealand (which has adopted this system) in February and I hope, other commitments permitting, to attend on behalf of the Government but we have a working party working on it at the moment, as indeed we have a working party on other aspects of rating reform. As far as differential rating is concerned, it is expected shortly, the Melbourne City Council will be given the opportunity for a limited form of differential rating in respect of its loop contribution.

I turn to the question of land tax and that is a matter for the Treasurer ·predominantly and Cabinet. All I can say is that it will be reviewed. It would be quite impossible for me to make any commitment on the part of the Treasury especially in a pre-election year.

Dr Lewis: I was puzzled on three separate topics here. Firstly, over the Ministers last point. The need in Melbourne is, I believe, not for differential rating between different land uses - it is the differential rating between different parts of the same municipality so that UCV and NAV can be applied to encourage development in areas which are under-developed and discourage redevelopment in areas like Collins Street, which are in a good condition. .45.

The second point is that I was surprised and rather horrified to find the Minister referring to the Gobbo report as if ·it were assumed as a desirable report and should be implemented forthwith. The Minister received a well documented analysis of the Gobbo report, which shows how unrealistic and biased it is. The Gobbo report implies giving to landowners rights of compensation they never had before, rights which are far more liberal.than apply in England or France or any of the civilized European countries. Rights which were recently thought to apply in America but by recent court decision in America do not.apply even there. The report is heavily biased and makes quite false assumptions about reasons for differentiating preservation controls and other forms of town planning controls and I am sorry to find it still being accepte_d as a valid document.

The main point about it is that the assumptions are that you give this compensation and that means preservation is virtually stopped in Melbourne. But preservation is not going to stop in Melbourne because the public is not going to put up with it, not only for historic and architectural reasons, but also because there is increasing recognition that the existing building stock is a resource in its own right. If you do not stop preservation, the Government has to pay out massive amounts of money which it does not need to do. It is making decisions now which happily put its neck in a noose as I understand it.

The third point I want to make is about hospitals. Hospitals are one of the most insidious forms of development in the inner area. They are taken to be a good thing - people who are sick are looked after .... All the inn~r­ city hospitals have expansion plans. The Queen Victoria had proposed to move out to Monash and has recently announced it has changed that plan. St.Andrews is doing the most monstrous redevelopment which is destroying the Fitzroy Gardens. The Freemasons' Hospital is starting to do a massive capital injection which will not increase the beds in the hospital at all but expand the hospital. St Vincent's Hospital is about to demolish some of the best housing in Fitzroy and is demolishing it with a view to clearing the sites. It has approached government bodies and outside bodies to occupy the sites they are demolishing and use some of it for car parking. It has already built, with public hospital money, a multi-storey carpark which is planned to accommodate patients and medical staff and which it has leased out commercially. So they use government hospital funds as an investment resource for themselves. They are now about to demolish more housing for the same thing. This is the character of all these hospitals. About two thirds of our hospitals should be moved out to the suburbs.

Mr Hunt: I will try to.reply briefly to the three issues raised by Dr Lewis.

First, he refers to the need for differential rates to deal with different occupancy of different areas. The working party has exactly that charter. We have one experience already of differential rating in Victoria and that is in relation to minimum rates - minimum may be different depending upon the occupancy or from area to area within a municipality. They are a flexible instrument of policy and that is exactly what the working party is looking at.

I turn to the question of the Gobbo report as it relates to historic preservation and I am delighted to hear that Dr Lewis used arguments that were contained in a very long letter from me to him when the Historic Buildings Act was before the Parliament. Dr Lewis then thought compensation was the answer and I wrote back pointing out that you cannot compensate for every zoning change or everthing you do or otherwise preservation zoning would come to a halt. Now would you still have a copy of that letter? If you .. 46.

do not, I will look it up and send you a copy today.

Dr 'Lewis: It is not like that.

Speaker: It is better than some of your Ministers can do - find letters in the file.

Mr Hunt: Well, there have been no complaints about my retention of records, anyway.

I agree that there is a fine line to be drawn but where? I do not accept the concept of compensating for zoning. If there is a streetscape zone.or a preservation zone, say, in St Vincent's Place, South Melbourne, I believe everybody is going to gain as they did at Maldon. If an individual building is singled out from every other in the street, then the owner is, in the words of Gobbo, prevented from undertaking a reasonable economic use and then I accept the argument that the community should bear the burden rather than the individual owner. So does the Government.

On the third question on· the hospitals, I accept the fact that their extensions can be intrusions in the inner area. It is obviously true.

Mrs Nicholls (Town and Country Planning Association): I want to address my remarks to the paper by Dr Jones. I thank you very much for that because you said a number of things I would very much agree with.

The· first question is the question of social mix in the inner suburbs. It ought to be realized that the inner suburbs were built with a mixture of large houses and small houses, quite often a street of large houses with a street of small houses backing on to it and that is one good way of guaranteeing a mix of use. Not necessarily in income use but a mix of life values, where the small cottages are occupied by the elderly and the pre-children types as it were, and the big houses are occupied by families, and I would say that sort of building ought to be done in the suburbs too, because it is the trouble with the suburbs that they are all built for one income, one life-style, which makes the suburbs so boring.

The second thing is that I thank Dr Jones for his remarks about the decline in population being equal to population normalization. The fact is large family homes, or rather homes in the inner-city built as family homes or single family homes during the period of the decline, were taken over as boarding houses. They are now reverting back to the use for which they were originally designed and Dr Jones pointed out that a quarter of the decline can be attributed to that and another quarter of the decline can be attributed to less crowding in single dwellings.

The true situation may be people are not living in boarding houses any more. This is a sign of rising incomes.

The other problem is the occupation of formerly residential buildings by non­ residential uses, like architects' offices etc.

Therefore, I would agree with Dr Jones that the decline in population is not a problem in inner areas and people ought not to accept that it is a problem. Simply, that the inner suburbs are what Jane Jacobs is calling de-slumming and that they are returning to a normal population situation as they were in the 1930s.

The other thing is centrall.sation and I am very grateful to Dr Jones for . putting his finger on this point. This is one of the big problems of the inner suburbs. I do not think we can deal with inner city problems without thinking about outer city problems too. One of the problems of the inner city \

.47.

is that too many people have to come into them in order to get to their jobs J and that is one of the reasons we have all the traffic in the inner suburbs.

A very large proportion of the objections to the Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme, which were objections in principle rather.than objections over ·particular land, deal with the fact that' the plan did not provide for hot spot growth areas in the middle or inner:-outer suburbs and that was the substance· of quite a lot of objections to the plan and still the Board (of Works) is not doing anything about that.

I would argue that if we as a group believed this was the case and we put pressure on the Board to alter their ideas, then maybe more growth centres would be developed in the middle or outer suburbs, which would then have the mixed uses we in the inner suburbs enjoy - so that one has houses, offices, manufacturing, all mixed in togethe~, so that people do not have to commute from the middle and outer suburbs to the C.B.D. but can live and work. in their own area which is the life the people in the inner suburbs now enjoy. That is the big advantage of inner suburban life - we live in areas of mixed use and we do not have to travel far to our jobs. Now. if these growth areas were developed in the outer suburbs, other people would have the same enjoyment of those conditions.

Dr Jones: All I would say briefly is that the problem of doing anything about centralization is that urban action is so long lived. The decisions that have been made in the last fifteen years to centralize state office accommodation in inner city Melbourne will be with us for a long,long time. That is a problem in urban planning that will stay with us for a very long time.

Speaker: I would like to comment on housing mix. I am concerned at the Minister's suggestion that development be undertaken by the Housing Commission. There is a great danger in this that much of the low income stock - the poorer quality housing in the area which helps provide.the housing mix in the inner suburbs - is being taken by the Housing Commission and being redeveloped into middle class housing stock rather than being redeveloped by the Housing Commission and providing low income stock to ensure the sound mix that provides much of the character of the_ inner suburbs. Having made that comment, I would just like to ask the Minister a question.

Most of the early speakers at this seminar have referred to traffic as the main problem confronting the inner suburbs. The Minister spoke of having the choice to live on a quarter acre block or to live in the inner suburbs. The Fl9 freeway is a development which puts outer suburban commuter convenience above inner suburban residential amenity and has created vast problems for inner suburban residents and destroyed much of the quality that has made inner suburban living attractive and many people have moved out of the inner suburbs.as a result of the Fl9 freeway. What steps will the Government in its planning policies take. to ensure there is a real choice for inner suburban residents, that there is a real choice _and that they are protected from this problem of traffic?

Mr Hunt: Let me take the introduction to your question first. The fact that I referred to what I regard as the best Housing Commission development yet - Raglan Street, South Melbourne and the Housing Commission/private enterprise partnership here in Carlton - does not mean that I recommend that the Housing Commission get into major redevelopment in .the inner suburbs. I did not suggest that - you made an assumption from the fact that I used one example of a good effort by the Housing Commission. .48.

Now, I made no such assumption nor did I make any such proposal. Indeed, I see the best redevelopment being undertaken by private erit~rprise. I would ·.. ~..: ·. like to keep the hand of government out as fa·r as possible although government assistance will obviously be needed with pi~nning provisions or even with land assembly on some occasions.

Now having said that, .I turn to your question·~ and the question relates to the spillover of traffic from freewa:)Ssuch as the Fl9 into the residential streets of Carlton and the like. I think you know very well the very. prompt action the Government took in collaboration with the City Council to cut: through red· tape to ensure that there were a number of road closures, traffic barriers and other provisions designed to minimize the impact. Some of the temporary sol.utions as you know have already been made permanent. In fact, the speed with which action was undertaken then was something of a matter of concern, in that some of the normal safeguards for people to object were overriden because of what seemed a very real need to ensure immediate actions to protect· the amenity of the residential streets there in Carlton - and that was done very, ve.ry promptly indeed. And there has been the closest possible collaboration between the City Council and the Government ever since. .49.

MOVEMENT IN THE INNER SUBURBS

Mr William Taylor

I would like to start"by asking you to use your imagination. I would like you to imagine that you are a plant rooted to the ground. You cannot move. All your needs have to be met by your immediate environment. Under such conditions, you are very much dependent on the things immediately around. It is just too bad if you cannot stand your neighbours. It is just too bad if the soil is deficient and cannot meet your needs. Movement is basic to our enjoyment of life. (You may stop being a plant and move once more). It is difficult to transform our enjoyment of living into an immobile society.

The Nature of Movement in Cities

Some of the movement in a city is necessary. Food needs to be brought into an area and througQ an area. Our economical well-being depends to some extent on other commercial trips; both of commodities and people engaged on business.

Some movement is made necessary by the separation of activities. Our home is selected on a variety of factors (outlook, size, near schools, near shops, near friends, near the beach) and not necessarily next door to our job. The job site is selected on different factors again and convenience to workers is not uppermost.

Some movement is.involved in increasing personal satisfaction. Man does not live by bread alone •..• There are social trips and recreational trips and trips which are pleasurable in themselves.

All these dlverse and diffuse movements are most intense near the centre of a city. Part of this intensity is attributable to the high level of activity in the inner area: the vital heart of the city, the special theatres, art centres, finance centres, retail centres and concentration of jobs. Part of the intensity of movement is due to the centre (or, in Melbourne's case, near the centre and confined by geography) being at the centre: it is on the shortest path between many points of origin and destination. There are many trips 'just passing through'.

Problems with Movements in Inner Melbourne

The movements of people and goods in the inner area of Melbourne, necessary as they are, bring many problems.

The spread of trips is such as to make mass transport difficult to use except in a few locations. Somethign like 70% of work journeys to the Central Business District use public transport, but this proportion quickly drops for other job locations and for other journey purposes.

In rounded numbers, the percentages for the use of public transport are:

Work Non Work Overall

CBD 70 50 60 Non CBD 25 15 18 Overall 33 17 23

The permission of the Chairman of the MMBW to present this paper is acknowledged. The views are my own and not necessarily those of the Board. .so.

Greater use could be made of public transport if there were more cross- town routes, especially in the central area. The current system tends to be focused on the Central Business District and. geared for the journey to work. The journey to work to the CBD is only about 5% of the journeys in metropolitan Melbourne. A more ubiquitous public transport system would be of more use especially to the ·people who do not have a car available either by choice or circumstance. Such a system should have:

(i) easy transfers ·between routes,

(ii) easy transfers between nodes,

.(iii) effective co-ordination of services (not just timetables) ,

(iv) routeing to suit local people.

For the foreseeable future, however, most movement will take place on the roads.

A brief look at trends in road traffic for the city as a whole allows some appreciation to be gained of the magnitude of inner area traffic problems since much of the traffic is related to the inner area.

In the attached graph of Annual.Passenger Travel in Melbourne since the 1920s, we see the rapid rise in the use of private cars. There has been a drop in the use of public transport but this drop is very small compared with car usage. The area has enabled trips to be made which would not be made by public transport. Road traffic has been increasing at 7%-8% a year whilst public transport was decreasing at about 2% a year. The overall levels are currently about 18,000 million person-kilometres by car and 2,500 million person-kilometres by public transport. Of course these are only estimates based on scanty information. The trend for car usage is very strong and it will take a good deal more than pious words and token improvements in public transport systems to break such a trend (if indeed the trend needs to be broken).

The impending oil shortage (crisis?) is referred to as sounding the death­ knell of the car. At least the price of petrol will increase and public transport will thus be more competitive. The attached graph of the Cost of a Litre of Petrol as a percentage of Average Weekly Male Wages shows a drop over the last twenty years from 0.2% to 0.1%.

The latest point on the graph does kick up but even a doubling in the price of petrol will only restore the position to that of the 1960s and it will not be significant in most family budgets. As far as absolute shortage is concerned, there are a number of steps that can be anticipated such as an acceptance of smaller vehicles, improvements in engine efficiency, lighter weight vehicles, different types of engines of which the electric battery vehicle is but one of many and in the longer term (20 year term) alternate fuels can be made available. The private car can be expected to be used for many years yet.

Large parts of Melbourne have developed during the period of increasing car ownership. Such development depends on the widespread use of cars for its successful operation. Regional shopping centres, for example, derive most business from shoppers who come by car and very large car parks are part of the deal. The suburbs are laid out at a density that is relatively low by world standards and very uneconomic for servicing by public transport. The inherent commitment to the car that such development represents cannot be ignored. People need cars in 'new' Melbourne. .51.

There must be a limit to the number of cars owned by people: no-one can drive two cars at once·. However, this limit is evidently some way off yet as the attached graph of Vehicle Availability suggests. The curve for Victoria is well below the curves for the United States.

As might be expected, the proportion of households owning a car is highest ~n the outer areas. The attached chart of Percentage of Non Car-owning Households indicates that about half the households in the inner areas do not own a car. Perhaps they do not need a car because of the availability of an excellent public transport system. Perhaps they have nowhere safe to keep a car. Perhaps they cannot yet afford a car or they are otherwise unable to use a car. Perhaps they choose not to belong to the car owning group on ethical, moral, religious or lifestyle grounds. Perhaps they just plain don't want one.

Whatever the reason for the relative low car ownership in the inner suburbs, there is a chance that a much higher level will occur in future. The chart could be interpreted· as a potential for car ownership. If increased ownership did occur in these areas, .then parking will be more difficult than at present (with attendant visual blight, increased danger for pedestrians, 'illegal' parking being prevalent (especially parking on footpaths), and increased conflict between _residential parking and 'foreign' parking). Moreover, the attempt to restrict 'through' traffic and 'CBD worker' traffic is likely to catch local traffic in the same net.

Difficult choices arise. On the one hand, there is the desire to keep the inner 'old Melbourne' relatively free of traffic, particularly in residential areas and thus maintain (or restore) the amenity of the residential environment. 'On the other hand, there is the desire to maintain a high level of personal mobility, especially the comfort, convenience, privacy, and range of choices offered by private cars. A recent study suggested that at least some people would rather be able to move freely by car than have the latest traffic management devices for discouraging through traffic. (Cohesive Residential Communities: a Study in Preston, carried out by A. M. Voorhees for the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works as part of the Hierarchy of Roads Study. (Not yet published)).

Residential Amenity

What do we mean by residential amenity.

There have been several attempts at exploring the dimensions of residential amenity.

The work of Colin Buchanan (The Buchanan Report - Traffic in Towns - an Enquiry by a Government Committee carried out in Great Britain in 1963) suggested that some roads should be designed according to the environmental capacity and this was related to the ability of people to walk across the road. Investigations by the Transport Section at Melbourne University (Nicholas Clark, Rus Symons) suggest an environmental capacity in terms of trip end density (number of trips starting or finishing in a square kilometre) can be related to people's intolerance for traffic as revealed by their leaving an area. Other measures are in terms of tolerable traffic volumes (say greater than 2,000 vehicles per day for residents to start complaining) and speed. These measures are also related to noise and safety.

Residential amenity can be related to the safety of children. Can children. walk safely to school and playgrounds? Can children play in the streets? It is not so many years ago when cricket and football were learnt in the streets of Melbourne. The wickets or goals would be grudgingly shifted for the occasional car to pass. Now most of these streets are lined with cars. Small .52. children stepping out from behind parked cars cannot be seen by drivers and the children find it difficult to ·see the moving vehicle. Besides, the amount of traffic, both locally generated and the 'through' traffic taking short-cuts, makes it impractical to be perpetually moving the wickets. Restoring residential amenity could mean being able to hand the streets back to the children after suitably apologizing for the oil stains.

Accessibility

Attempts'to restrain traffic are likely to decrease the accessibility. The accessibility of an area is related to people's ability to move around in an area and to enter or leave it. The proximity of desired destinations such as schools, shops, offices, jobs,af£ects accessibility. Also, the ease of travel (as measured by distance and travel time and fares and other charges) affects accessibility.

The inner suburbs are the most accessible regions of Melbourne, as is to be expected. This area contains the largest share of the action. The public transport service in the area is the best available, although road based public transport is suffering from traffic congestion.

But, the accessibility of the inner area is decreasing relative to the rest of the metropolitan area and it seems that it is the relative accessiblity that matters. The work of Patton and Clark at Melbourne University suggests that people are sensitive to the changes in relative accessibility that are occurring when home sites are being chosen (reported in the.Tewksbury Symposium, 1970). A similar phenomenon is likely with the location of jobs, especially those related to access to the public, such as shopping. This loss in relative aocessibility would partly explain the loss of population and particularly jobs from the inner areas. The increasing spread of the city in itself lowers the accessibility of the. inner area and reinforces the trend. The increasing congestion on the roads, with the associated decline in overall travel. speeds from stop-start m?toring, would further decrease the accessibility of the inner areas relative to the rest of Melbourne at least as far as road access is concerned.

Heterogeneity

There is no single transport problem for the inner areas and there is no single solution either. The difficulties of movement are multitudinous and selective medicine should be practised. Specific solutions need to be carefully developed for specific problems in specific locations.

The Hierarchy of Roads Study, currently being carried out by the Board of Works in conjunction with others, seeks to provide a reference for local action. Arbitrary standards are not being developed. It is more in .53.

the nature of suggesting where solutions may lie. Different solutions in different areas are likely to be appropriate. Some suggestions, in order of increasing traffic interference, are roundabouts, restricted movements, pavement narrowing (& beautification) and full closures (&beautification) .

• As far as possible, transport planning and land-use planning should be co-ordinated and undertaken as an integrated operation. This is the spirit of Statement of Planning Policy No 5 (Highway Areas). In particular, attention should be given to sub-regional structure where community facilities can be placed near each other and advantage taken of the available public transport. (Sub-regional Structure: a study of its influence on public transport and car usage, report prepared by Loder·and Bayly for the MMBW (not yet published)). The struct\ire of .transport and land-use· could be different in each municipality and this would be desirable.

Some of the advantages of a heterogeneous approach are:

(i) specific solutions to specific problems;

(ii) an exploration of possible solutions without jeopardising the whole city;

(iii) the evolution of an interesting metropolis where a variety of experiences is available;

(iv) the opportunity to exercise choice of environment within the city;

(v) a robustness to change allowing for steady evolution rather than potentially catastrophic spasms.

(The Concept of Heterogeneity and Change among the Mandenka, by Sory Camara, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 7, p. 273-283 (1975)).

The l~st point is worth elaborating upon. The actions taken today are typically reactions to yesterday's problems and using today's set of values. These things change with time. Our concern with energy and traffic was not anticipated even a few years ago. What will be the concerns of later generations? On the basis of past history, it is probably not going to be energy and traffic. As far as possible, we should avoid imposing limitations on the actions which future generations may wish to take. Constraints need to be kept under review and removed when found unnecessary. The constraintsof 'standards' and 'regulations' ar~ particularly I insidious.

The Metropolitan Parking Study, being carried out by the MMBW, is reviewing the requirements for vehicular parking provision in the Planning Scheme Ordinance. (Refer Consultant reports byN.EClark and Associates and Wilbur Smith and Associates). The provision of off-street parking is very relevant to the inner suburbs. Firstly, if the provision for parking in new developments is insufficient, then spill-over parking onto streets t in the neighbourhood can be expected, worsening the blight of parking for those areas. Secondly, if the development requires acres of bitumen for parking, then a visual blight of a different form can develop. Thirdly, the cost imposed on development by the need for parking may be too heavy a burden and the development may not go ahead, usually to everyone's disadvantage. Finally, the provision of parking will continue to encourage car usage in areas where the social environment is already suffering .54.

from car-caused problems.

The proposal is that the provision of parking be determined by factors which vary from site to site. For example, the availability of public transport lowers the parking requirement. The aim would be to derive the • amount of parking appropriate for a particular circumstance . Managing Metropolitan Movement

Road traffic is expected to increase and be well in excess of the road system capacity.

The actions which can be taken with public transport improvements, car parking limitations, petrol prices, sub-regional activity structure, road closures~ • ·are unlikely to be sufficient to significantly lower the traffic demand. Inc.reased congestion can be anticipated and should be managed. For example, the locations where long queues of vehicles operate under stop-start conditions could be selected so that the effects of the resulting air pollution, noise, visual intrusion, pedestrian safety, etc., can be minimized. Some roads in the inner areas could be designated for 'through traffic' and, using co-ordinated traffic signals, every endeavour made to keep the traffic moving.

Other roads in the area would be managed to discourage 'through' traffic to some extent but, taken with the higher speed routes, the need for road closures would be lessened. Road closures inconvenience the local car driver as much as the 'through' driver; ~ocal journeys become longer (increasing traffic levels) and often shift the problem into adjoining areas. Lesser measures such as roundabouts for slowing traffic are feasible where suitable arterial alternatives are available. In this last respect, perhaps a few freeways are yet needed as bypas? routes where the social cost is less than the social benefit.

A limitation of parking provision may be imposed where there is concern about detriment to the local environment or where public transport use is to be encouraged or for other planning reasons. The limitation would only be imposed until superseded by a traffic management and parking s'cheme which dealt with the problem explicitly. The integration of such schemes with the intended local development plans would be expected.

The limitation. on parking in inner areas is not just a social matter. The physical ability of the roads to service the parking is of concern in some areas. It would be ridiculous to require more parking provision in an area than can be serviced •.. The problem arises as to how to equitably . share the limited space available. For example, the Jam Factory redevelopment in Chapel Street, Prahran, will have a large car park. The adjoining site could not also .be serviced by road to the same level. First-in-best-dressed does not seem appropriate. Shared parking arrangements need to be encouraged particularly when the demands occur at different times. For example, a school could readily share its car park with a church.

" In the longer term, some reduction in movement could be achieved if multi­ purpose activity centres are encouraged. The one motorized trip could replace several special trips for separate purposes. Such centres would assist in giving the necessary concentration of trips for public transport to be utilised. Dial-a-bus systems become particularly attractive in such instances especially if also related to feeding a rail station. .55.

Encour.agement could be given to shorter trips if more information were made known on what is available locally. Many of the longer trips are made to widen the ra.nge of choice and finding what is required. It may be available locally. Telecommunications will assist this· process. It is unlikely that telecommunication will replace personal travel but it will affect travel.

The advances in telecommunication technology are being paralleled by developments in transport technology. Widespread adoption of a new technology to match the existing public transport systems and the road systems are some time off yet. An automatic public transport service could be provided on guideways eventually.

Summary

The diverse and diffuse movements of people and goods in a large city produce problerns·for residents near the centre.

The problems have many sides to them and no single simple solution is possible.

The approach suggested is to seek specific solutions to specific problems in specific locations. The city is thus expected to be less uniform. Town planning and transport planning need to be treated as the one process. New initiatives are indicated for public transport and traffic management both at the local level and the regional level. Greater emphasis should be given to cross-town buses for movement within the inner suburbs.

In the longer term, advances can be expected in city structure, telecommunication and transport technology.

Movement is inherent in our society: it could be more graceful. .56.

Figures

Annual Passenger Travel in Melbourne Petrol Cost - Relative Changes • Vehicle Availability Percentage of Non Car-owning Households Population Change and Traffic Density Contours of Accessibility to Employment Contours of Change in Relative Accessibility to Employment •

20 I 15 i ~ U1 '° § .-...) m -d 8 s § -§

192:1 1930 1940 1945 1980 . 1981 1170 1975 1980 YEAR ENDING JUM1!

~NUi\L PASSENGER TRAVEL IN MELBOURNE P/3TROL COST-- R&lATIVe CllAAJGes.______,._

0·20

0·10

0 ------~------~-----~...__------.__~~~--_._~---_. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 66 6'8 70 76 78

COST OF A l!TRe OF P&TROL AS A P6RC/3NTAGf5 OF. AVeRA66 WeeKl y

• • MAl& WAGeS I .59· I .. ) I I I 0·600 i • I ! 0·550 j· 0·500

0. 450

0. 400

0 ·350 2 0 (/) ffi 0. 300. a. i i a: 0. 250 ! w . a.

(/) 0•200 - a:

0 • 100 -

0. 050 -

0·000 1945 so ss GO 65 10 75 so ss so ss · ;;::noo

VIEE-HCfLE AVAlfLAFalllRTY

'L 'JI .60.

PERC5!JTAG5 OF -· iJOkl- .. , ...... ·', CAR - OV/WUJG HOUSHOLDS.. '· •.

Port P/J1//ip . Bay ~~ . P6RCc>JTAGe, OF HOUSES-5/ZOfJE.

•

*-• ''ce"-l~·us BOUl-JDARY CHAt--:•o-es PReCL-UDi.. :: STRICT COMPARlSO!,~ ~/ SOURCE: A.B.S. 1966 - 1971 CC.h.lSUS .

... Population change and traffic de.i'1sity .Gl. FIGURE l· in districts of increasing accessjbil­ ity, Melbourne 1964 . .• I*" I I :F'IGUHE t ·: I.ow ·acc2ssibility increase ~A. I. · = -1. lo + (, urne 196,.l. &:>urce: s·.;::-::::ms (1972) ·Note: !i.l\I.* = A.1.* (1966) - ?ti.* (1966) *l. l. l. .. At. is the normalisc.

I~ . e I . ' I · ] l\A.1. = H, fo + >-O ~n;bl i-_-- r··- -\!) \!) 7°' r--1 \D r-1 ...... °' r=-1 ., t'> ;---'-.,:--+----+----1---··j ~ (J~· •Z 0 H ~ t:':l ."=>,4 • 0 P.1 I1. • I ~ ' I ~l I; i I Slil . 1 2ro %0 Ct".: SU ZXl 5!0 TRZ\PFIC DENSITY (Veh. trip er.ds/ TRAFFIC DENSITY (Veh. trip ends/ gross sq.km.) gross sq. km.)

FlGURE .z. FlGURE ~ .62.

l':.":"TO~l

•• BULLA

--

O<==t=,~'l ) L .J ITii le"

PORT PHILLIP BJ\ y . t \2 f I ! T ,.· ·6Q- ) " t 9 6 5 -~---- ~- --·-----~···'

• Thous;i,.-,d w~rk::lac:e;; per ninu~e

. Contours of Accessibility to Employm:::.-1f. r.ieJbourne, 1965. .63 .

.A!~.UYSIS or URE.A.I'{ DE\'ELOPNENT

..

r

~!. ~ L:J &::\ih1>

PO Rf PHILll P DAY

• Centaur lfni!s :­ f.!inutes-1 11iO::

Co:itours of Change in Relative Accessibilift; to Employment, 1961-65, Fr.elbourne. - . . . 64.

FISCAL POLICIES

Mr Terry Cocks

Perhaps it is more than a coincidence that I am to address you on the subject of fiscal policies the day after Melbourne Cup Day. My personal involvement extended to the office sweep which, in keeping with experience over several previous years, again proved that gambling on the nags is the sure way of getting nothing for something. Put another way, by none other than George Bernard Shaw, gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich - something for nothing. And as I intend to show later, there is a good deal of relevance in that quote to property and fiscal policies.

My terms of. reference were· substantially wider than the heading of "Fiscal Policies" published in the leaflet and it was suggested that, inter alia, I touch upon the implications and opportunities for investment in the inner suburbs, the financial significance of urban conservation and redevelopment policies, the impact and effect of rates and taxes, and the likely nature of future planning policies and strategies for the inner suburbs. You will concur that a vast range of issues are contained in the foregoing but,· and as I expect you would prefer, I will discuss several fundamental matters which may arouse discussion, if not controversy.

A starting point is to refer to the address by the Chairman of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works to the Urban Land Institute of Australia on 6th July, 1978, on the subject of ,"Development Alternatives for the Inner and Middle Suburbs". Mr Alan Croxford stated his views on the issues and problems succinctly, emphasising that financial constraints and the availability of capital are critical factors in both the public and private sectors. He also referred to the need for policies to take into accoun· preservation and restoration, create employment opportunities and have political and community acceptance.

At this point in time, there exists a mood of apprehension about the inner suburbs. To some people, they are an inconvenient stretch of mixed development between their workplace in Melbourne's Central Business District and their home in the outer suburbs. To residents, there is the real fear that even greater inroads will be made into their neighbourhoods to serve the demands of non-residents. Business people are frustrated at new impositions placed upon them which inhibit their enterprise. Whatever else can be said, there is a pressing need to achieve stability in the planning system.

However, change must be expected. Each year a number of buildings outlive their useful lives and become a potential liability. This process is part of urban evolution and is particularly relevant to conditions in the inner suburbs.

In any urban environment, a balance needs to be struck between old and new buildings and the uses to which they are put. It is stressed that the uses of land and1building contribute to the character of an area just as much as the appearance of the buildings themselves. To achieve and maintain viability, it may be necessary to permit alternative uses which, measured against performance standards, are compatible with or appropriate to the location. The right planning policies will help to produce a thriving, prosperous community, without unnecessary frustration of development opportunities or, worse, unreasonable or unexpected intrusion into residential amenity.

Some parts of the inner suburbs obviously must be preserved and enhanced for residential use. Other areas call for renewal. Renewal programmes .65.

within the public or private sectors will require substantial capital outlay and we are back to the overriding issue of the availability and distribution of scarce funds. As to the public purse, I submit that enterprise and the annual use of property have just about been exploited to the maximum, and neither source could sustain a further significant tax imposition. It is doubtful, also, that under present political and .· economic conditions Federal funds are likely to be transferred from one pocket to another.

Rates derived from local properties are the traditional financing source of local government and it is probable they will remain the major source of revenue.. Income is also derived from government grants, licences and · fees, contributions from authorities such as the Country Roads Board and Health Department and, need I add, car parking fines.

I have attached to my notes a schedule which shows over several years the assessments of rateable properties in the inner suburbs, the revenue derived from them, the population and number of dwellings, and other information which may be of interest (see Appendix 1) .

In brief, these figures show a decline in population in each municipality, not much movement either way in the number of dwellings and rateable assessments, a substantial increase in site values, improved values and net annual values, and a correspondingly large increase in the revenue from rates. One can play with the figures, but it could be interpreted that businesses are supporting the residents.

Most Melbourne ratepayers can expect to pay about 7% to 8% more to their. local councils this year, roughly equivalent to the inflation rate. (see Appendix 2). But the Municipal Association has warned that heavier rate rises are looming if councils do not receive a bigger share of the Federal Government's personal income tax collection. At present, councils share 1.52% of the tax collection, despite strong campaigning for at least 2%.

A word about the Victoria Grants Commission. In essence, the Victoria Grants Commission Act 1976 gave authority for the establishment of the Commission. Its primary role is to determine the allocation between municipalities of grants from the Commonwealth to the State for local government authorities under the provisions of the Commonwealth's Local Governme~t (Personal Tax Sharing) Act 1976. The grants to municipalities are determined on what is referred to as an equalisation basis, with a minimum "as of right" amount based on population and area. The equalisation system takes into account a host of factors, or comparative disabilities, including development constraints, age distribution of the population and social needs. I have attached, as Appendix 3, a schedule showing the grants to the inner suburban municipalities for 1977/78 and 1978/79 and the percentage increase.

Board of Works rates on property are assessed on the net annual value. These,too, have increased very substantially over recent years (see Appendix 4) .

Land tax is another impost on property which, without intervention, would have increased astronomically in 1978. As a result of the Government's policy to minimise the impact of land tax, the total revenue has not risen (see Appendix 5) although some property owners will stillO sustain an increase.

! I ! l .66.

Land tax is assessed on the unimproved value of the land (now Site Value) and the controversy still rages as to whether this is the fairest and most efficient base. Some contend that the Net Annual Value is more appropriate, or a mix of the two. I do not propose to discuss these differences in detail today, and have appended, as Appendix 6, a summary of the various arguments for and against each system.

Some while ago we did detailed research into the effect of changing the base of Land Tax from U.C.V. to N.A.V. on several properties in Prahran. In general, and as to be expected, fully improved commercial properties would pay more under a N.A. V. system, res.taurants less, low intensity factory development less and houses generally less.

As a matter of completeness, I have attached as Appendix 7 some information about the growth in basic and actual wages which may be compared with the increase in taxes.

As previously emphasised, I do not think there is much scope for revenue from further or additional taxes on property, certainly not residential. Conceivably, the Commonwealth Government will provide more funds through the Grants Commission but not of any really significant amount.

I understand the Government at Federal level is examining the use of retail turnover taxes and value-added taxes as a means of increasing revenue. There seems to be a general shift away from property taxes. One source receiving substantial attention in the U.S.A. and Canada is the user charge, whereby· an explicit price is placed on the consumption of various public services e.g. water supply, sewerage, refuse collection. The user charge performs two functions, in addition to being a source of revenue. First, it provides a direct measure of the taxpayer's willingness to pay for various services provided by local government and it gives the taxpayers a better understanding of what he is receiving for his tax dollar. Secondly, the user charge performs the function.of a price. A subsidy or relief system could be introduced with a user charge to protect disadvantaged members of the community.

Most of us will be aware of the passing of the Californian Constitutional Amendment, known officially as "Article XIII A of the Constitution" involving the limitation of charges and use of property taxes in that State from 1st July 1978, an amendment which became popularly known as "Proposition 13".

Basically, the intention is to limit taxes in amount and rate of increase, and prohibit the imposition of new State taxes on property. The effect is likely to reduce tax revenues very· substantially - in the region of $7 billion in the 1978-79 fiscal year.

Taxes on property were higher in California than in Victoria (about $1,500 on a home valued at $50,000) but there.are certainly rumblings here about the total of Board of Works and council rates, and land tax.

There is an article on this subject by Miss Jerry Meagher in the R.E.S.I. Journal of November, 1978, which is commended to those who would like greater detail from a person who visited America and specifically researched the matter at the time.

Overseas loans seem to be the "in thing". For the first time, the Federal Government will allow the States to borrow overseas and Victoria proposes to borrow $340 million for the Loy Yang power plant and $56 million for the World Trade Centre. Conceivably, borrowings could be extended to urban renewal proposals and the improvement of the inner suburbs. All loans, however, have to be se·rviced and repaid; and the money must come from somewhere. .67.

There are two basic measures of a person's taxable capacity, his income and his wealth. It seems to me that a tax system which concentrates on income rather.than wealth is not only a disincentive to enterprise but favours some people relative to others, in particular, taxpayers whose _incomes are derived from property which is appreciating in value have an .,, advantage over taxpayers·whose incomes are derived from personal exertion. Under pres.ent circumstances, taxpayers who are in a position to do so are encouraged to convert taxable incomes into non-taxable capital gains, thereby throwing.a greater burden on the remaining taxpayers who are not able to avoid tax in this way. Whilst land dealings as a form of business or.when effected over a short period of time are deemed to be taxable, there is a multitude of small and large scale speculators who put out money in real estate in the belief that this form of investment (or speculation) is the best hedge against inflation in the medium and long terms and the surest means of making a tax free capital gain. There are also more sophisticated investors or speculators - call them what you will - who engage in land transactions carefully orchestrated to. avoid the impact of taxation. Apart from the loss of taxable income, these owners deprive others in the community of the benefits of the use of such land as envisaged in the relevant planning scheme. In essence, therefore, there is in my opinion a strong case for the introduction of a Capital Gains Tax and a Site Withholding Tax. Let me hasten to add that I am a supporter of the private enterprise system and this philosophy endorsed my strong belief that there should be a Capital Gains Tax.

I now want to make some further reference to the private sector and its role in the inner suburbs. I have indicated that a balanced view needs to be taken in respect of preservation, protection of residential amenity and redevelopment. It is of interest to note that whilst the objectives of the existing residents may differ from those of the developers, their expectation~ of the planning system are not wholly dissimilar. For example, there is common ground in at least these fundamental respects:-

(i) To know their rights and entitlements deriving from the ownership and use of land.

(ii) Not to have the value of their assets depreciated or threatened .by new or unexpected town planning measures and innovations.

(iii) To be compensated for loss and damage due to new and especially onerous town planning requirements and incompatible public works.

It is the operation of the market which plays the major role in encouraging developers or private investors to build houses, factories and offices, more or less as and where they are needed. Business responds to profit making opportunities. Thus, a demand for flats or town houses. leads to rental increases of ex~sting dwellings and then the construction of more stock. If there is no vacant land, the developer will wait until it pays to buy established homes and demolish them.

Investigations suggest that under present conditions inner suburban sites, vacant and developed, are over priced for most redevelopment purposes. They have not adjusted to the effect on values of peripheral expansion and development of decentralised suburban centres. Thus, major reinvestment is inhibited. .68.

There is certainly no incentive in the private sector to provide low cost (low income) housing. If the private sector is to be involved encouragement must be given by the government, lending institutions, planning and buildi_ng authorities. In the final analysis, the crux of the problem lies in finance. Not merely the availability of development funds, but also the distribution of profits. If continuity of urban development and improvement is to be assured, a free flow of funds must be available to the public and private sectors at an attractive interest rate.

We need to consider very fully how the preservation of specified buildings and areas of special planning significance can be achieved.

There are four ways to prevent an old building being pulled down; the economics of rehabilitation may encourage its use, it could be purchased by an appropriate authority, ·1aws could.be passed to prevent demolition, and the owner could be made to feel ashamed to pull it down. It will be asserted in some circles that the multitude of those who are ashamed is manifestly obvious by the number of vacant sites which now exist in the place of old buildings, and that it is impossible to legislate against the unprecedented ravages of rampant death-watch beetle, and galloping dry rot, accidental fires which engulf apparently incombustible structures and · invitations to vandals by unlocked doors and open windows.

There are, of course, two sides to the story and it is naive to expect anyone to suffer a continuing loss by retaining an inefficient or dilapidated old building. Of the alternatives, the.most effective process, without recourse to acquisition, is to make rehabilitation economically viable. Market trends may s~pport renovation, but if not and it is deemed desirable to preserve a building, then a grant-in-aid, rate or tax remission and other incentives should be available .. The recommendations of the Gobbo Report should, in my opinion, be implemented without delay.

There is one further aspect I would like to discuss. On one side of the equation we have conservation planning, and on the other economic feasibility. Is not the solution, in part at least, for government agencies to occupy preserved and properly renovated buildings? Why does the Education Department need to take seven or so floors in Nauru House when, I would have thought, any number of well renovated buildings would have provided suitable accommodation? Taking this further, it may be advantageous, from both the social and economic viewpoints, for the Housing Commission or Urban Land Council to buy and renovate existing homes in the inner suburbs rather than build new houses in comparatively remote locations. Let me emphasise that I have not conducted any re·search into such a possibility but it may be worth looking at.

There are a few further points I would like to make or reiterate about planning generally, and its application to the inner suburbs. Contrary to the views of some people, I believe conventional zoning can be an effective technique for protecting established neighbourhoods. However, market and social trends can lead to change and deterioration, as can bad planning decisions within the planning framework. Good administration is vital. Variances, granted piecemeal over a period of time, can become in the aggregate major sources of incompatible intrusions. That needs to be recognised by all Responsible Planning Authorities.

I repeat my previously expressed views that in a democracy there cannot be any absolute consensus about planning issues because by their very nature they are at the interface of differing ideologies and philosophies. We must seek the best solution in the circumstances. If this is recognised, planning will move forward more effectively and expeditiously. .69.

People's discontent tends to focus on the town planners but they cannot be the deus ex machina of the urban condition. The problems are vast, multitudinous, intricate and changing. Utopian results cannot be expected. We have to understand and recognise our own limitations and move forward as best we can. Success will not come from sudden, drastic changes to the planning system, but in progressive, ord.erly reform.

I think we lack in Victoria, and in Australia generally, a discipline of University status which is devoted to the study of property. There seems to be a whole host of courses and groups concerned with various speciali~ed aspects of land, building design, the environment, valuations and management.

Perhaps the soluti~n would be to establish a Faculty of Urban Studies, which would embrace Town Planning, Architecture, Environmental Studies, Valuation of Property and Aspects of Law. It is suggested that within this faculty, there should be a graduate course in Estate Management to provide a degree, analagous to a qualification in medicine or law relating to property and its use. The faculty should be equipped to undertake research into urban and regional matters and provide the results to the public and privat~ sectors.

Let me end as I started, and refer to the horses. After all, Ladies Day is tomorrow. It has been said that if you bet on a horse, it is gambling. If you bet on cards, that's a game. If you bet on Poseidon, that's business. Well, if you bet on property, that's investment. Can you see the difference?

Thank you for your attention. Remember, the best clubs do not ask how a .man acquired property, only has he got it? .70.

REFERENCES

A.S.P.O. Private Planning for the Public (A. S. P. 0. ) Interest.

A.S.P.O. Toward a More Effective Land (A.S.P.O.) Guidance System.

Branch, Melville C. Planning Urban Environment (Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross Inc.)

Ed. Browing, Paul B. Local Service Pricing and Their (University of British Effect on Urban Spatial Structure. Colombia Press)

Kennett. Wayland Pres_ervation. (Temple Smith)

·Neutze, Max Urban Development in Australia. (George Allen & Unwin)

Papageorgion, Alexander. Continuity and .Change - (Pall Mall Press) Preservation in City Planning.

Ratcliffe, John Land Policy. (Hutchinson)

Various Papers Economic Benefits of (The Preservation Preserving Old Buildings. Press)

Various Papers A FUture for Old Buildings? (Sweet and Maxwell)

Whipple, R. T. M. Urban Renewal and the Private (West Publishing I - i Investor. 'Corpo:ration Pty. Ltd.) ...... -1; .r - '11 ·•- .. J\PJ5ENI.ftx1- . - Site Value C.I.V. N.A. V. Gen. Rate :\Jin. fb t0 Total n evenue Population D\yellings Ass.essmt>nts natepayers \-oters Roll from Rates . ~ ' c·ollingwbod ; ..

73/74 $54,580,342 $116, 863, 200 $7. 011, 790 15.9c $40. OD. $1. 126. 084 . 20. 700 6,000 8, 165 8. 028 9,428 .,) (U.C.V.) (approx) 75/76 $55,802,982 $121,909,370 $7,314,562 25.5c $60.00 $1. 874, 229 19. 900 6,315 8, 165 8,028 9,227 (approx) .77/78. $109. 0~2. 012 $205,039,070 $12. 302, 344 19. St/:. $60.00 $2,408,426 19,900 6,315 8, 142 7. 980 8, 911 (approx) ; N.A. V. ' Fitzroy· ; 73/74 $31, 283 .. 471_ $6,310,979 16.5i $60.00 $1,074,029 29,000 7. 740 8, 773 7, 500 11, 001

75/76 $31, 783-. 361 $6,386,773 2s.5c 27 .-ooo 7,740 -$60.00 -$1, 793, 599 8, 125 7,500. 10,761 77/78 . ·s114, 241, 010 $242,005,600 $15,006,270 15.25c 82, 140,445 26,000 7,950 8, 65.5 7. 700 It. 680 . N.A.V. '

'

:vrelbourne 73/74 , 8581, 312, 013 $1, 253, 928, 6:I:l $81,340,889 16.25c on 813,473, 945 78, 800 21, 935. : 38,890 20, 918 38,967 (C.C.V.) X.A. V. . '313,647,129

.. 1 75 76 $584,827,467 $2, 369, 012, 600 $90, 618, 186 20.6c s 1 8 I 3 3.3 I 7 l 3 7-±,400 23,418 41,442 20,298 40,001 / (U.C.V.) ' 77/78 Sl,259,504,056 $2, 493, 107, 875 $151,523,660 822', 267, 461 GS,-!00 20,925 41,526 40,276

N.A,\·:

Port Melbourne 73/74 $61,073,910 $136,729,600 $7,578,655 12.5c $961, 992 l l, 705 3,219 3, 941 4, 179 I : 75/76 $71, 1 71, 955 $140, 531, 500 ' $7, 926, 270 20.15c $1, 651, 734 l 1, 705 3, 199 3, 937 5,436·

:

( . !:.!, 800 3,200 3, 935 5,378 77/78 $116, 190, 280 $212, 949,. 500 $14,333,275 13.7c • $2. 151, 795 ~-· . . .- N. A. V• ,

.. ·-···- ---·- - - -- ·---·-•R•- ,'l,_ -· -- • Site Value c. I. v' N.A.V. Gen. Hate :'din. Rate Total Revenue Population Dwellings Assessments Ratepayers Vot0rs RciTI' from Rates

Prahran ./ 73(74 $187.388.000 $421. 711. 000 $~5.136.894 8.75c $2.354.554 57,000 25.629 25.629 31.425 ' ' N.A.V. 75/76 S187. 107.053 $430.000,000 $25.695.856 14.25c $3.455.714 56.600 .:> 23. 650 26,424 35.876 77/78 .S376. 166, 822 $829, 028, 000 $49, 220. 910 8.7sc $4,028,018 50,900 23.500 26,209 35.064 N.A.V . ...

Richmond 73/74 $76,596,442 $10,495,545 1sc $1,564,547 28,000 10;200 11,586 1.1, -158 7,074 (U.C.V.) -· 75/76 S78. 909, 611 ' $10, 963, 505 21c $1,,587.492 27,:700 11. 027 12,130 12,850

77/78 $141, 978, 233 l $20, 919, 486 13.sc $2,824,130 1 7, 500 11, 027 13, 133 ! 12.453 ; ' X.A.V. St. Kilda ' 73/74 S131, 743, 245 21,485.826 lOc $2, 178, 169 60, 260 25,547 27,209 . •; 33, 123 31, 123 ;: N. A. V. I·

If. I.· .. .- 75/76 .3210, 350, 225 $520, 404, 05 '.'t $2.2, 453, 901 1G.5c $3, 720, 857 60,260 27, 643 34,047 ;, K.A.V. ; 77/78 3209,566,645 $526, 015, 15 $35, 418, 070 l .. 12.sc $4,506,536 54,800 19,850 ! 27, 885. 35,927 "f I . . . ::'\.A.V. i

... South Melbourn~

·73/74 S134,972,464 $280, 202, 4?.·t J. $18,780,445 1. 7825~ Res. $2,421,600 26,816 9, 217 11, 397 13,947 (U.C.V.) 12.451235c on all special rateable properties. ( 75/76 S134,605,610 $296,651,354 $20,608,808 2. 45985c on $3,427,516 26,500 9,023 11, 494 14,902 s. v. 1. 47591 c on Res. 16.196 on - special rate- able . S221,874,487 $31,685,704 "' .77 I 78 $485,897,900 Composite $90.00 $3,606,724 21,333 8,143 11, 609 14,423 Rate 5. 777c on S. V.

. 0.8228on ', ::~ '" - .... ·.... - N.:A.V...... ~ - . 11. 5554c on -~: . - ;;:£ ... special rate- ! ..... _ _:; .. i .,...... ,.,. .- ...... _"" .. .. able . I,:,.. .. ' \ ' ' . I ' ...... O. 0351~-Res. 890.00 I - - ...... - 'I . .73. APPENDIX 2

INCREASES IN CONSUMER PRICE INDEX *

All Capital Cities Increase Melbourne Increase

September 1973 139.6 136.8

September 1974 162.0 i3. 8% 159.4 14. 2% .,

September 1975 181. 6 10. 8% 177.7 10.3%

September 1976 206.9 / 12.2% 203.2 12. 5% ,

September 1977 234.1 11.6% 231. 6 12. 3%

September 1978 252.5 7. 3% 249.6 7. 2% j l i' ':' J3 as e Ye a r 6 6 - 6 7 . .74.

APPENDIX 3 .,.

•. y VICTORIAN GRANTS COMMISSION - GENERAL REVENUE GRANTS - 1977-78 1978-79 % Increase

Collingwood C. $230,000 $250,000 8% Fitzroy C. 300,000 317,000 5.36% Melbourne C. .700, 000 800,000 12. 5% Port Melbourne C. 100,000 113,000 11. 5% Prahran C. 300,000 325,000 7. 69% ' Hichmond C. 205,000 223,000 8. 07% St. Kilda C. 355,000 390,000 8. 97% South Melbourne C. 135,000 165,000 18.18% .75. APPENDIX 4

INCREASES IN THE MELBOURNE AND METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS REVENUE FROM RATES AND OTHER SOURCES

Year Revenue from Rates Increase

73/4 73. 8 million dollars

74/5 102.2 million dollars 27. 8%

75/6 130 .1 million dollars 21. 4%

76/7 149 million dollars 12. 7%

77/8 162. 8 million dollars 8. 5%

Year Total Revenue Increase

73/4 89.1 million dollars

74/5 115. 8 million dollars 23%

75/6 14 7. 2 million dollars 21. 3%

76/7 172.4 million dollars 14. 6%

77/78 190. 2 million dollars 9. 3% - LAND TAX IN VICTORIA

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977

k• No. of Assessments 63,488 66,558 72,777 72,033 6. 267

! 3, 189,018, 542 3, 170, 845, 757 3, 152, 445, 175 I Total S. V. (U.C.V.) 2, 056, 115, 831 ;3, 057, 498, 074 ' 58, 792, 263 56, 129, 315 i Total Tax 30,139,234 58, 398, 972 59, 388, 056

Distribution

City 5, 839, 739 12, 161, 370 11, 758, 835 11, 405, 699 Not available I (% of totai tax) (19. 4%) (20. 6%) (19. 8%) ( 19. 4%)

11 11 Metropolitan 20, 181, 323 40,059,574 41, 334, 086 40,743,038 -..J (% of total tax) (67%) (69%) . ( 69. 6%) ( 69. 3%) .O"I

11 11 Towns 3,665, 381 4,523,532 4,988,597 5, 232, 511 (% of total tax) (12.1%) ( 7. 7%) ( 8. 4%) (8. 9%)

11 11 Broadacres 452, 791 1,654,495 1, 306, 538 1, 411, 015 (% of total tax) ( 1. 5%) ( 2. 7%) ( 2. 2%) (2. 4%) . 77.

APPENDIX .6 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST RA TING BASED ON SITE VALUE (S. V.) (OR UNIMPROVED CAPITAL VALUE (U. C. V. )) AND NET ANNUAL VALUE (N. A. V.)

(A) The Case for N. A. V. Rating 1. Levying of rates on annual values provides additional revenues year by year as new buildings are constructed without raising rates or increasing the amount of individual assessments.

2. It is more equitable since the revenue is derived from the actual use of land and paid out of income earned from land. and improvements.

3. It has greater regard to ability to pay and to services supplied than S. V.

4. The use of S. V. or U. C. V. rating to enc.ourage development has largely been achieved in "built-up" areas.

5. N. A. V. encourages a mixture of uses.

6. N. A. V. can be determined more definitely and without the same difficulties and anomalies attaching to the determination ofS.V. orU.C.V.

7. It removes some of the difficulties in valuing land arising from the operation of town planning schemes because it more particularly relates to actual use.

8. It is more equitable as it is taking ipto account both the advantages derived from the land and the actual use to which the land is put. .• 78.

(B) The Case Against N. A. V. Rating 1. A rate on the improved value or N. A. V. is, in respect ·of that proportion of the value that relates to improvements, a tax on those improvements.

2. A rate on improvements is a tax on the value of s.omething produced by labour and enterprise and is, therefore, anti-productive.

3. It encourages poor development because the lower the value the lower the rate.

4. It is advantageous to speculators in land.

5. It favours the withholding of land from the market.

( c) The Case for S. V. (U. C. V.) Rating 1. It dampens speculation in land. It is argued that if the rate were high enough, it would abolish land speculation.

2. It reduces the value and sale price of land because it reduces the benefits.arising from mere ownership.

3. It brings into use land which would otherwise be held out of use awaiting a rise in price, thereby promoting production I I and employment. I I I- 4. Subject to proper planning controls, it tends to force I ·people to put their land to its best use, thereby reducing the incidence of slums and preventing land being held out of use. .79.

5. As wages depend upon what can be produced at the margin of production, rating on the S. V. or U. C. V. raises '..I wages and increases the ability to pay.

6. It is easy to collect and its collection .admits of no subterfuge, falsehood, deceit or evasion and it greatly reduces the number of.tax gatherers.

7. As the rate is an amount in the dollar according to value which varies according to its proximity to community services, public transport and social amenities, the rate is in a sense indirectly a payment for services and benefits received.

8. It is conterrled in some quarters that a rate on the S. V. of land cannot be passed on in higher prices for products or rents.

9. S~ V. rating satisfies the rev·enue raising requirements of a local government tax.

1 O. S. V. of land is more stable, whereas N. A. V. must be kept constantly under review to allow for changes and additions to improvements.

11. Property owners gain more incentive to develop their land when improvements are not taxed reflecting both practical and psychological reactions.

12. S. Vs. are created .by demand with community cost developments in the form of local government services, replanning, road, harbour, drainage and sewerage works and it is right that some part of this unearned incremenet in land values should return to the community through property taxation or rating. .80..

. ' 13. S. V. taxation gives owners incentive to put land to its best possible use.

·14'. Employment in the building industry is stimulate-d, not only in relation to new buildings but also in respect of repairs to old premises.

15. It often gives the State (i.e. the community) some share in increments in land values attributable to replanning. while giving rating equity to property owners whose values are adversely affected.

16. A rate or a valuation which is unaffected by the improve- ments or the site must encourage development.

1 7. The increments on land value which would result from public expenditure should be taxed to meet such expenditure.

18. Additional revenue would result from a rate on S. V. where an influx of population due to public expenditure increases the demand for land, consequently the value of the land.

(D) The Case Against S. V. (or U. C. V.) 1. S. V. suffers from four main defects:

(a) it is not sufficiently related to the use of the land, (b) it has little or no relation to the financial return the land yields to the ratepayer. (c) it has little or no relation to the demands made on those services which Councils are called upon to provide. (d) it has little or no relation to the ability to pay. .81.

2. There is still adequate sco_pe for development or ;·:re-cie ·.:':iopment even in the most built-up areas without the need to enforce an inequitable land tax based on S. V. or U. C. V.

3. The opportunities for and advantages of holding vacant land even in the heart of developed areas and commercial centres would be increased and land speculation would thereby be encouraged.

4. The Report by the Committee of Inquiry on matters arising under the Valuation of Land Act 1916-1951 (N. S. \V.) September 1960 (The Bridge Committee), stated that many ' anomalies would ari$e in assessing values under S. V. ·rating.

5. Better type development, particularly with factories and commercial buildings, would be discouraged.

6. Surveys suggest that this system penalises small scale owners in comparison with large business interests in close proximity to the city.

7. S. V. ignores the use to which the improvements are put (Valuation of Land Committee's Inquiry, 19 66).

8. Rates or taxes, on S. V. are frequently out of line with· the land owner's ability to meet them out of current income.

9. If the level of charges under S. V. is too high, strong pressure is created to over-develop land. ·-

1 O. Inequalities can result between owners of different types. of commercial, industrial and residential properties. -82. APPENDIX 7

MINIMUM WAGES IN THE MELBOURNE METROPOLITAN AREA

Year Minimum Wage':' Increase

June 1973 $60.00 June 1974 $68.00 11. 76% June 1975 $80.00 15% June 1976 $95. 90 16. 57% June 1977 $108.30 11. 44% June 1978 $115.40 6. 15%

':' Effective from 1967 being the minimum wage payable for a full week's work as defined under the various Ordinances.

AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS PER EMPLOYED MALE UNIT IN THE MELBOURNE METROPOLICAN AREA

Year Average Weekly Earnings':' Increase

June 1973 $107. 60 :.. June 1974 $127. 70 15.74% .June 1975 $153. 70 16. 91% June 1976 $181. 00 15.08% June 1977 $200.80 9.86% June 1978 $218. 10 7. 93%

~J ::: Seasonally adjusted. .83.

THE STANCE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

.. Mr David Andrews

Mr Chainnan, my favourite set of jaundiced inner suburbs municipal ] anecdotes from the past I hope will serve to tell a tale about local government in inner Melbourne, indicate issues for the present and raise questions for the future.

Such parochialism will be carefully balanced by quotes from Chairman Mao Tse Tung and references to Red China - just to introduce an element that has not arisen already during the course of this seminar.

Eugene O'Neill wrote, and I quote:

"There is no present or future - only the past happening over and over again - now".

I think our deliberations have already illustrated that fact. So a backward glance, first up, still leaves us with the here and now. My first anecdote. Councillors of the municipality were discussing the future of the local baths, a heated indoor pool strategically placed in a high demand area of inner suburban Melbourne. Bright ideas were flowing from the left and other ideas from the right. One suggestion was made that the whole facility should·be modernized and provision made for a sauna. At this, Cr G.J., the dominant power in the majority Labor group rose to his feet and thundered his opposition. He had just returned from overseas where'he had seen a lot of fancy new stuff in public installations. And while trying to grapple with what a sauna might be, he roared: "We don't want any of that flora and fauna stuff in our baths". And that is exactly where the matter rested; and is probably an adequate explanation as to why those baths today are more often shut than open to the public and presently in a slum-like and derelict condition.

Perhaps, this is not typical inner suburban municipal decision-making respect nor generally cha~acteristic of the local government stance in of civic affairs. But it is a familiar enough situation where the unaware simply vote en-bloc following an ultimatum. And the informed are reduced immediately to laughter or despair, only ultimately to find themselves voting in the same immovable power bloc. In the municipality I just mentioned there is no city sauna facility - not really a significant deprivation. Interestingly, native flora is thicker on the ground these days, but overall decision and policy making processes are largely unchanged in many, many decades.

Secondly, and from the same municipality, a councillor was inspecting an area where the Housing Commission had moved in and was demolishing on the old block clearance basis. The contract bulldozer operator left his machine and approached the councillor. "What do you want?" he demanded. "I am a local councillor. I am just looking at what's happening". "So you are a local councillor. I can help you make a lot of money. See that bulldozer over there. I can demolish houses for you, very cheap". "No, I'm not interested in demolishing houses". "Why not? Aren't you one of the big boys? Do you sit next to the Mayor". "No, I don't sit next to the Mayor. I'm not one of the big boys". "Oh, you aren't", the bulldozer · operator said, registering immediate disinterest and moving back to his machine. .84.

The assumptions of the bulldozer operator may not typify how all citizens see their councillors or the motivations or values of councillorso But I •' \. would venture to say' that in the case of the City of Melbourne and surrounding inner suburban municipalities, it would be very close to the way in which most citizens generally regard their elected representatives. ,I • What bearing does that have on the stance of local government in the inner suburbs? What, if anything, do we need to do about such deeply ingrained attitudinal responsesof people to the roles and conduct of our civic leaders?

A third incident. The Town Clerk was briefing the novice councillor as to events in the ward in which an extraordinary election was being held. Referring to one of the candidates, the Town Clerk remarked that it would be tragic if he were ever elected. The person concerned had been on council previously and the Town Clerk assured the novice that this candidate was a troublemaker. From the officer's point of view, he was always an irritating and impossibly inquisitive snooper,. The Town Clerk pursued his point relentlessly, painting a picture of a paranoid mental defective, with whom the young councillor should have no dealing - if, God forbid, that person were elected. Well, elected he was, and though a dissident voice occasionally he proved to be one of the most articulate, rational and conscientious councillors in that municipality. The rules of the game and games officers and elected representatives play will always be a colourful part of the reality and politics in the inner suburbs, as elsewhere.

John Dearlove in his book, "Politics of Policy in Local Government", documents ,,'!!' many facets of this fascinating interplay - the ways in which a municipal organization can mobilize enormous reserves of bias to offset change. And the manipulations that do occur to deter community action groups'inputo

In respect of officers in municipal organisations, the question may well be how to legitimate that role of the professional administrator in a non­ elitist way, so as to minimise manipulation and to ensure that they maximise total community input into decision-making and policy formulation.

Fourthly, 'one of the local lads was in the process of casting his seventh vote that day at the one booth for his party's candidate in the municipal election. Dressed this time in singlet and shorts, thongs and sunglasses, he bounced in to the general mirth of scrutineers in the know and the Town Clerk returning officer alike. Last visit had seen him shuffling in wearing overcoat and floppy hat pulled well down. All day in various disguises and at regular intervals, he trekked from illustrious tick board to the polling booth - a true and devoted son of the party and the "'l'ammany" machine.

But why make an issue of incidents like this. Yes, true justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. But what can you do when this practice continues with the knowledge and tacit approval of the major political parti~s concerned, certain senior municipal councillors and officers - and without any effective action from the Department of Local Government. ,, '• How can the people be protected from this sort of malpractice - or more to the point, how can they more effectively act as guardians of their own democratic rights?

The final incident occurred subsequent to the federal intervention into the Victorian branch of the ALP, in a municipal Labor caucus which, of course, must remain nameless. .85.

The smoke filled upper room contained the fourteen Labor councillors, the l,ocal MP., leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the State House, and the Federal President of the ALP at the time. Unfortunately the latter was· far from cold sober, as urged on by the local Member, he proceeded to severely reprimand a group of dissident councillors who had stepped out of line in the matter of the financial arrangements between council and the lessee of the council abbatoirs. These arrangements had been recently up for re-examination but not reviewed or revised - on the advice received from the local Member's legal firm. The decision had been: no change to the arrangements, notwithstanding grossly excessive losses suffered by the ratepayers of the municipality. Some councillors had chosen to dissent from this course.

Well, what have we here: local councillors, State MP and a federal party president, all jointly assembled. Could it be a highly commendable interlocking of all levels of government, with tne local municipality as the strategic venue? Maybe. But why was the 19cal Member so concerned to dragoon councillors into a submissive acceptance of the abbatoirs deal? How can we provide for the integrity of local government against the onslaughts of other agencies, be they private, governmental or party political?

Or, as Maud intimated in 1969, how do we so reconstitute local government as to "enable it to develop enough inherent strength to deal with national and state authorities in a valid partnership".

Perhaps these anecdoates overall serve to indicate variously why as Dr Joh~ Power stated in a paper to the Metropolitan Town Clerks this year: "Local government has usually been considered and has considered itself inferior to other levels of government because it has been small rather than large; parochial rather than cosmopolitan in outlook; led by amateur councillors and under-educated officers instead of the professional at the helm of . other levels of government; and starved of resources. Its self esteem badly damaged by this stereotype, local government has usually been deferential in its approach to the other levels of government, exhibiting resignation at its gradual loss of functions and gratitude at occasional small pieces of largesse thrown its way".

But I was asked by you and your Committee, Mr Chairman, not to just relate a smattering of stories but to answer certain questions pertaining to the stance of local government in the inner suburban Melbourne environment. Your questions and my answers are as follows. I ask you to forgive if some answers are longer than others.

Firstly, you ask can councils as presently constituted and financed ensure that the inner suburbs can continue to be diverse, dynamic and responsive to change. I believe the answer is no, clearly and categorically. Certain strategic, attitudinal, organisational and fundamental changes which I will mention briefly later are necessary if greater competence is to emerge; if individuals and organisations alike are to be motivated, which at the moment they are not, and if responsible municipal government is to ensure that the inner suburbs are not swallowed up in the relentless and humanly degenerating quest for bigger units of government.

The attitudes and stance of local government officers and elected representatives to development in the inner suburbs and to municipal management are numerous, varying from the highly motivated "serve the people" stance in some cases to that which is opportunistic and exploitive.

It would take a long time to trace the full range of class and individual variables present within the ranks of this sample. There are a number of common factors. There is, for example, a shared awareness of the complexity .86.

of the inner suburban scene - we have shared that aspect already today and the great energy all round which will be needed to ensure that in the future, development is not synon0nous with the bulldozer, highrise wastes, freeways and resultant zones of blight or private deals for a few or for party election funds.

Secondly, Mr Chairman, you ask what are the difficulties faced by councils. The problems are many, complex and fundamental to sound municipal government. As already suggested, huge vestiges of organisational incompetence and inertia exist internally with resultant cases of apathy from citizens as a general rule. These are clearly difficulties in inner suburban Melbourne.

Thirdly, you ask what should Councils' future role be. How can they find and direct resources to ensure, where necessary, conservation of the urban area. I would add here, what is the appropriate stance for local government which will, in the future, enable it to do anything of major consequence in response to community needs. ~he answer is the same to all of these questions. What is.required is a dynamic reorganisation of municipal structures to move beyond the sterility of the present representative system which in any case is peculiarly inappropriate for the immediate grass roots encounters, exchanges, etc. of local government and towards a dynamically participatory system peculiarly suitable for the local conduct of local affairs. In arguing for a genuinely participatory system) let me acknowledge and I quote here from a paper, "The Fabian Tract 419, Towards Participation in Local Services:,.

"Discussion on participation has now continued long enough to make it more import.ant to ask how rat:fer than why. It is time to get to grips with the problems and possibilities of implementation".

In proceeding to implement a more participatory system of local government in the future, certain fundamentals are essential.

Firstly, having been bogged down in· the representatives.{ pseudo-democratic process, we have to make the jump to 'conceiving of participation as' a '·switch to citizen power. Conceptually, w~ must start by avoiding and repudiating manipulation and tokenism, envisaging an actual transference of power to an exercise of power by people in our respective communities. ·

Secondly, participation ip municipal affairs must be conceived of and practiced as an educative process,. educative not in the sense of "Tell 'em!", but as Carol Pateman states, "Education, educative in the very widest sense, including both the psychological aspect and the gaining of practice in democratic skills and procedures".

Open councils and committee meetings together with agendas available ~o the public hardly represent participatory democracy run riot. Local counoils, local government, must be so restructured as to facilitate skill acquisition by citizens, integrating and developing those skills as deliberate aspects of community resource management and impetus. .·.

Thirdly, integral to genuine participation is the recognition of the essential political nature of the act of planning. People who seek to rna.i'~tain the myth that planning is and must be non-political are enemies of the public good, that is, criminals. For their arguments merely seek and ultimately try .. only to "privatize" planning for petty or prestigious profits. Therefore, we must recognise the political nature of planning, get all the actors, participants, out in the open and onto the stage and then enable the full plurality of political interests to interact. .87.

Fourthly, we must relate participatory planning to the whole organisational and spatial context of politics. That is, we cannot motivate people to participation in planning as an isolated act and leave it at that. There is no reason why citizens should be especially motivated to participate in planning while remaining indifferent to other matters. Participation is a ·... diversified form of cultural action, a totalized and totalizing process, as Paul O'Fahey states. It is the means whereby a whole range of conununity needs can be met by the full use of conununity resources and skills.

Fifthly, participation must be firmly based on a widespread understanding of the conununity at large. That which happens at the grass roots and passes upwards is at least equally important as that which happens in Canberra or Spring Street and passe_s downwards. What we need is a system which has regard to the thrusts from below with a great deal more sensitivity than at present.

Recently I returned from my second study trip to China. With a local government group, I focused on conunune life and administration. What L.S. Stavrianos writes in his book, "The Promise of the Coming Dark Age", is correct and I quote: "The Conununist Chinese leadership typically does not seek a solution through decision-making at the top. Rather the problem is defined and discussed on a mass scale, then grass roots experimentation is conducted throughout the country. Results are reported, ·les~ons are exchanged and a nation-wide cross fertilization process continues until a genuinely recognised satisfactory solution is reached in some locality. This solution is then proclaimed as the model for the entire country and all resources of party and state are used to build it up and to ensure maximum impact."

This foundational respect for what local skills can generate and develop should be integral to a participatory system. Therefore, Mr Chairman, initial units of government, local ·community extensions of the family, should be small. Capable of projecting beyond the neighbourhood or mini-district _ to subregional, regional and levels of government beyond. I am envisaging a network of interlocking neighbourhood or precinct units as the first·level of municipal government. For the most part, the second level would, in terms of inner Melbourne, be approximately the existing municipal units with possibly some adjustment in the case of Fitzroy.

The major structural change envisaged then would be for the recognition of these first level interface units, the front line of participatory units, for problem solving and experimentation. Such a system would be dependent upon movement in the directions already indicated. Equally, it would facilitate those attributes as well, that is, such a restructuring would encourage participation, citizen power, conununity skills for conununity purposes, a more fully pluralistic interplay of political forces than we have here in.Victoria and much more projection upwards rather than imposition downwards. ···

Given all this in a progressively and responsibly orchestrated process of change in this direction, two further components will be required. Firstlyl the appropriate conununity organisation model to operate the neighbourhood precinct level. Secondly, the appropriate leadership perspective on the part of those exercising the decision-making, policy formulation roles they are in. No, in the case of the former, I am not advoating the Chinese commune production team or brigade. Though, in the case of the latter, the appropriate leadership perspective, ·I would cite Chairman Mao Tse Tung. He stated: "Our cultural workers must serve the people with great enthusiasm and devotion and they must link themselves with the people not divorce themselves. There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need and the other is the wishes of the people who must make up their own minds instead of our making up their minds for them". This is the leadership or professional style needed in the participatory environment and which has .88.

so much dynamic potential in the municipal sector if participatory democracy ever becoine's integral to that system.

The North Richmond Family Care Centre, as projected in recent TV coverages, offers both the model and demonstration of the proper professional style approach. As a mutifunctional multifaceted community body, it ~uns on the I .... dual motor fo~ce of membership, citizen participation and leaders working with and for the people. Sadly, a far cry from what pertains in inner suburban municipal affairs. A plaque on the reception desk at the Centre reads: "Serve the people, live among them, learn from them, plan with them, start with what they know, build with what they have". This philosophy should not be at all strange to operators in the municipal sector in inner suburban Melbourne or anywhere else but unfortunately here and now, this is the case. Perhaps this spirit can be engendered further as the style and stance of local government in the inner suburbs, by appropriate structural and administrative chang'es and by the offering of encouragement to residents and citizens in what continues to be a dynamically potential inner suburban environment. Perhaps by movement to a more deliberate participatory system, we can, as Alan Hunt suggests, revitalise the magnet. .89.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE INNER SUBURBS

Dr Miles Lewis

To begin with the customary disclaimer, ladies and.gentlemen: I have lived in the 'inner suburbs of Melbourne for thirty one years and inner 'J suburbs elsewhere for the four years preceding that. I suffer from agoraphobia when I so much as cross the Yarra. Most people don't live in the inner suburbs, and they feel slightly uncomfortable about them: there is a general feeling that something.needs to be done about them. In terms of public policy, that is the sort of feeling that I think underlay Mr Hunt's comments earlier. But whenever anything is done, it falls short of expectation and at the same time damages what we have. The purpose of this paper is to argue that we have been wrong in interpreting these areas according to out-of-date and irrelevant stereotypes and wrong in trying to impose permanent solutions. We should be intervening as little as possible in these areas; we should be intervening only when we are sure of our objectives; and we should not intervene in any way which will damage the capacity of these areas to absorb and adjust to future change. Anne Latreille made the point that these suburbs were not laid down as a result of social planning nor do they respond to traditional planning approaches. Cr Mccutcheon pointed out that the inner suburbs have a characteristic of constant change and Michael Jones made the same point almost about the flexibility and adaptability which characterises these areas. These are the. very points which I want to take up in this paper.

The history of these inner areas has been, from the very beginning, a catalogue of misunderstandings. The arc of land from .-Richmond to Fitzroy was sold from 1839 as large suburban allotments with very few decent roads reserved because the land was seen as being for farming: and yet the process of close subdivision began within weeks of the first sale. The urban character of South Fitzroy was so obvious by 1842 that it was included in the city area under the Melbourne Municipal Corporation Act o::\= that year - but no account was taken of the views.-of Robert Hoddle that the other suburban lots should also be included, as they would soon be built over in the same way. The story was, from the beginning, one of simplictic plans being quickly overtaken by the pressure of events.

Nor have we suffered merely from the sorts of irrelevant stereotype implied by the Colonial administration's land sales policy and the Melbourne Municipal Corporation Act. Sociology, too, has reared its ugly head. E.W. Burgess's model of the Chicago of the 192Qs has been translated to Melbourne. According to this model, the Central Business District is like a bulls-eye at the middle of a series of concentric rings: the innermost ring is the zone of transition where older private houses are being taken over for offices, for light industry, and for subdivision into denser'. residential accommodation. Outside this ring is a zone of workers' dwellings, and so on. According to Burgess, the zone of transition·.- which we can best identify with our inner suburbs - is characterised by immigrant areas, vice areas and generally unstable social groups, rather than by settled families.

Burgess's theory has long been recognised as specific to one time and place, ·and in other .circllinstances must be modified or even rejected. But the notion of this zone of transition has penetrated our collective subconscious and assimilated to itself certain other stereotypes about stagnation and urban blight, and all this is ~inked with a prejudice against medium density housing which has been especially strong in Australia since the depression of t.he 1890s, rising to prominence on the coat tails of the Garden City Movement. .90.

It is worth noting that this thinking, which has called into question the inner suburbs, has produced in the middle and outer suburbs an ... environment and a way of life that have been ridiculed by everyone from Robin Boyd to Barry Humphries - but also an environment that is now becoming more seriously deficient because it depends on universal of fuel. IJ motor car ownership and, of course, upon dwindling supplies So often, as in this case, it is not simply a question of live and let live: those considerations which made wider suburban life attractive were the same ones which led to a revulsion against the inner suburbs, and now there are not only arguments in favour of inner suburban life, but the same arguments suggest that middle and outer suburban life is no longer.viable, and indeed may be almost criminal.

Now the zone of transition stereotype is not irrelevant to our inner suburbs: it correctly credits them with a mixture of private houses, flats, offices and light industry; with vice and with a migrant population. We might want to qualify the idea that they are the main repositories of unstable social groups, according to how we interpret the term, but there is an element of truth even here. What needs to be challenged in this view is the concept of movement - the assumption that the business district gets bigger absorbing areas that were in the zone of transition, that the zone of transition enlarges in circumference at the expense of the zone of workers' dwellings, and so on outwards.

The truth in the Melbourne scene is that most of the areas now in the transitional state acq\.iired these characteristics in the 1840s or 1850s. The mixture of industry and private houses - including some large houses - was evident in the riverside suburbs almost from the start and Brunswick Stree· Fitzroy, had a great reputation in the 1840s as the haunt of the criminal classes. These areas also had a large population of migrants - this population is difficult to identify statistically in the mid-nineteenth century when the bulk of the population were immigrants and when the continuing migration is of the same overwhelmingly British stock. But there is plenty of other evidence to indicate that the first wave of assisted immigrants, beginning with the ship David Clarke in 1839, was largely accommodated in these areas. Again their population expanded enormously, and quite disproportionately in relation to the Central Business District and to more outlying parts of Melbourne, with the gold rush immigration of 1852-3. I do not know whether any work has been done on the first location of migrants of later periods, but the role of the inner suburbs as a receiving house for new migrants becomes patent as soon as non-British migration becomes important, and particularly in the recent post~war period.

Another zone of transition characteristic is subdivision into denser residential accommodation: and again, of course, this denser accommodation appears in Melbourne inner suburbs not principally as a result of dividing up larger houses or redeveloping their sites, but ab initio. Today, or at least in very re.cept times, such denser accommodation would be provided in the form of flats, but in the nineteenth century it was terrace houses. One still hears occasionally the naive question, 'for what social class were the terrace houses built' and it is best answered by a comparison with flats - that is, they accommodated all classes of bachelors and childless couples but larger families only of the poor. A surprisingly large number, too, were built from the outset as boarding houses - a building form which barely has a modern equivalent in Melbourne - and this use is surprisingly little reflected in any special characteristics of the planning and fitting out of the buildings. . 91.

Now let me make my point quite explicit. The outmoded zone of transition concept still serves very well to describe some of the characteristics of our innter areas, but the idea of this zone as a gradually expanding ring is false. our inner areas had many of these characteristics from the beginning. They are indeed a zone of transition in the sense that they are much more subject to change than the middle and outer suburbs - and should continue to be so, as I will argue shortly, but they are not to be seen as areas that were once solid workers' housing and are soon to become part of the central business district.

Another of these stereotypes is that of obsolescence of the building stock. These areas contain a great concentration of Melbourne's older buildings. Every building, it is widely believed, has a limited life, and in areas such as these this idea is perhaps reinforced in some people's minds by analogies with the large tracts of London which are let on ninety-nine year leases which all fall in at once and present golden opportunities for large scale redevelopment. Now when people speak of the limited life of buildings, they seem to believe"that is a specific age - perhaps one hundred years - when the stucco will flake off and the bluestone will crumble. Many of our older buildings have deteriorated and many have been demolished, but of those that remain I confidently predict that a good proportion will outlive those we are building today.

The truth is that you cannot buy bluestone that will crumble ip a hundred years, or even a thousand. Age alone is not a good indicator of a building's structural condition. J.B. Cullingworth's work on Scottish housing found worse conditions in housing of a medium age than in .that which was older - in that case, it would seem, because there was a phase of jerry-building in the 1890s. The idea of a building having a specific life really derives from investment planning, when you aim to amortise development costs over a period, and after this period - say thirty years - to redevelop the site once more. Even then, there is no way you can select the materials and workmanship that will last for thirty years but will not last for sixty -·and indeed, the p~oportion of sites that are redeveloped at the originally envisaged date is probably infinitesimal.

Now none of this is to deny that buildings do become functionally obsolete, but the time is long past when the only thing to do to a functionally obsolescent building was to raze it to the ground and start afresh. The truth is that the life of a building in the inner areas is more a matter of market demand than of any intrinsic functional or structural characteristic. In other words, people will now pay more for a Victorian terrace than they will pay for a modern building on the site which may better. meet their specific functional requirements. Nor is this the only thing going for old buildings - for example, they often have a site coverage which would not be permitted in a new development, and this is a built-in disincentive to the developer.

The latest of these stereotypes that bedevil these areas is that of displacement. Middle class trendies are moving in and forcing out the long established working classes and disadvantaged groups. Now I do not wish to be taken as holding any brief for trendies, but I do think that this heart-rending scenario needs to be treated a little sceptically. If as a result of a small inheritance, I sell my house in Fitzroy and move to Toorak, I have not been displaced, I have escaped. If the Greek residents of Fitzroy find that they can sell their houses profitably to young middle class· couples·, and, on the proceeds·, fund a trip home and buy their dream house at Reservoir, they too have escaped, not been disp~aced. There is I suppose a sense in which the Greek population, considered as a group, has been di.sp)..aced by the trendies, as a group - but I happen to believe, and .92. will argue shortly, that this sort of change is not only natural but desirable.

Now one can.certainly conceive that there are some people who did not want to sell their property at an inflated price, but were forced to, because of rising rates and taxes. All I can say is that I believe that most are glad to pocket the cash and, for the rest, within the whole spectrum of urban injustice that surrounds us today, the plight of those people who have money forced down their throats against their will agitates me much less than some other problems. It does agitate me, certainly, that tenants in the inner areas may be forced to leave because their landlords upgrade the property to a higher rental standard or sell out to the advancing middle classes. But it would be pointless to waste tears on the short-term tenant who shifts accommodation every few months in any case - if this tenant belongs to a category of person for whom we wish to maintain a reservoir of accommodation in the inner areas (as opposed to protecting him in his existing tehancy), that is another question, to which I will return. There are longer term tenants who deserve protection in their existing tenancy, for example, old people who have lived for a long time in their area and for whom moving would be a traumatic shock. Certainly anything to protect these is to be welcomed.

The diminishing stock of boarding house accommodation is one easily identifiable trend that is commonly held to be a most serious instance of displacement. Of course to demonstrate this literally, one would need to locate these displaced boarders living - presumably in new boarding houses - in outer areas such as K.:i.llista or Altona. And this one cannot do because these people, by and large, are not being displaced. Boarding houses are a good investment proposition. Until relatively recently, Gordon House was operating as a paying business in the Central Business District itself. The greatest concentration of boarding houses has been, and perhaps even now is, on the most valuable land in the inner suburbs, the Special Use zoned land at the south end of Drummond Street, Carlton. The reason that the boarding houses concentrated here was partly because ther~ ~ere mnay large terrace houses well suited - if not in some cases actually built - for boarding accommodation. More importantly, though, the cumulative total of the rents paid per room in even relatively sleazy accommodation makes a tidy sum. By occupying a small area, boarders actually pay quite highly per square metre, and the boarding house therefore prevails over other residential uses and can locate on prime land ahead of other residential uses, hence, the South Drummond Street concentration right qn the fringe of the Central Business District. It is true that boarding houses have been becoming fewer in Drummond Street but it is also true that they have generally been replaced not by trendies, who are priced out of the market, but by offices. More importantly, however, for a number of years while this diminution has taken place, advertisements, for rooms to let have been numerous, in other words, the remaining boarding houses have trouble keeping themselves filled. My suggestion is a simple one - that the boarding population has itself diminished: '.few. people are now setting up as boarders. The generation that most did this was probably that of the Depression, and these people quite simply are dying out, or, as the sociologists would argue, are being displaced to heaven.

There are other groups besides boarders who are seen to be threatened by displacement,_ and some inner suburban municipalities have a positive policy of trying to retain all categories of disadvantaged population. There seems little reason to do this: it is not necessarily in the interests of disadvantaged groups to be cooped up together - nobody trying to break free of a life of crime or vice is helped by continued association with his colleagues. Certainly, the unemployed do not improve their chances of finding a job by living in a suburb full of the unemployed. .93.

But all of this is debatable: what is clear is that this policy is opposed to the interests of the municipality because it maintains depressed values and rates and places an enormous burden on welfare facilities. It is also clear that this policy is incompatible with another conunonly held social goal - a goal often advanced by the very same people who advocate protection of disadvantaged groups from displacement - that of social mix.

The concept of preserving a suburb for a specific class needs to be questioned. There may on occasion be a real public need for some measure of this sort: we have recently heard of the difficulties of staffing public transport i~ London because there is no acconunodation anywhere near the centre for the sorts of people who might take public transport jobs. But generally speaking it is absurd to say that the inner suburbs, because they happen to have accumulated an undue proportion of lower income and disadvantaged population; should be frozen for this population rather than meet the needs of groups with a real interest in locatinq near the.Central Business District. But my objection to the institutionof social ghettoes goes deeper than this. I object to any attempt to freeze the character of the inner areas in any specific social role.

This brings me to my central argument. I have criticised a number of stereotyped att{tudes towards the inner suburbs and I must now say how I see them, speaking firstly in terms of their residential character. When I spoke before of the two phases of immigration which contributed to their rapid growth in the nineteenth century, I did not stress the point that many of these migrants moved on quite soon to other areas: the inner suburbs were a sort of reservoir or holding tank for a segment of the population which was abnormally enlarged due to historical circumstances but which was in due course to filter out more uniformly through Melbourne and indeed Victoria. Perhaps the prime case is that of Canvastown, off St Kilda Road, which only survived for a couple of years in the 1850s. The number and diversity of the people, often very successful people; who began their colonial experience in Canvastown is quite remarkable. The same role in a broader way and over a somewhat longer time span was performed by the inner suburban arc as a whole.

These first waves of migration are only one instance of a special population pressure. The next abnormal pressures were those of returning gold diggers, then of the workers in the newly established manufacturing sector, then of the poor in the depression of the 1890s: often, of course, they were the same people in each case. There is plenty of evidence of where the gold diggers settled - adjoining Gold Street in North Collingwood, for example, are Ballarat Street, Alexander (for Mount Alexander) Street, Forest (for Forest Creek) Street and Bendigo Street. This sort of evidence, and the evidence of individual biographies, is purely circumstantial, but nevertheless compellingly indicates that the inner suburbs absorbed a high proportion of the returning gold seekers. Again, it is not open to serious question that the manufacturing sector, which barely existed before the protectionist policies of the sixties, located largely in the city itself and in the inner ring, and that the workers located themselves in the same area.

The evidence for the influx of the poor in the depression of the nineties is less clear-cut. Although there is much evidence of large mansions in the middle suburbs being abandoned, even before completion, and a general shift of population across the spectrum into humbler; more densely occupied .94.

and more centrally located acconnnodation, this is in conflict with the longer term tendency which was ultimately to prevail: the movement of families out to detached houses which was made possible largely by an expanding public transport network. overall, however, the two tendencies give rise to a shift in which the inner areas acconnnodate fewer families and more of the poor, and in which there is an expansion of the boarding house sector.

The next depression was to produce a similar effect, not only with the desertion of some of the more distant villas but with the more intensive occupation of the inner suburban housing stock, with jerry built subdivision of houses into flatettes. In fact, the great movement of building-in terrace house balconies, which was to continue in the year of post-war shortages and is an anathema to the trendies and the conservationists of today. But the moral is once again the same. When one segment of the population was abnormally distended, in this case, the poor, the inner suburbs were the one area with the capacity and flexibility to take up this pressure.

Post-war immigration had exactly the same effect. There are, of course, arguments that the migrants needed a central location and were attracted by the form of housing closest to that to which they were accustomed. But I would suggest that the inner suburbs were mainly chosen because they were the only areas capable of absorbing this new pressure, and they allowed the migrants to find their feet, and their tongues, before filtering out·into the metropolis at large.

What pressures followed upon the period of migration? A phase of general affluence produced an excess of young middle class couples able to buy into the housing market, and the maturation of the post-war baby boom saw a massive increase in the number of tertiary students. Both of these new pressures were taken up in the same way.

The lesson from all this is that, time after time, whenever there is any sudden demographic pressure, the inner suburbs and only the inner suburbs have been able to mop it up. In due course each population largely disperses and gives way to the next. These suburbs, more than any others, are subject to continual change: they are indeed a zone of transition, but not in the expanding sense used by Burgess. They are performing a unqiue organic role on behalf of the metropolis, and any policy initiative should be . directed towards preserving this capacity ior change - not towards fixing them as social ghettos, migrant enclaves, or middle class conservation areas.

The role of these areas has not of course been solely residential. They have been seedbeds of industry. I am not referring simply to the fact that industries like fellmongeries and brickworks established themselves along the Yarra at an early stage, and that manufacturing industries followed later. Jane Jacobs, in The Economy of Cities, has written usefully about how new work begins, and about adding and dividing work, and much of what she says can be very usefully applied to an understanding of Melbourne's industries. All I want to say is this: it used to be possible, and it used to be connnon, for an inner suburban dweller to start, with his • lathe or his welding machine; a small backyard industry. He was close to a great mixture of manufacturing enterprises and retail outlets which could both supply him and buy his products. He was close to a heterogeneous population which could supply labour if he had the opportunity to expand. .95.

Such a backyard entrepreneur, without many major policy decisions or many major injections of capital, could grow into a viable manufacturer. It might then be that he grew too big for his origins and was ready to raise share capital or borrow money and to buy or build a proper factory in some outer area. Now there is no way he could ever at the outset have bought industrial land in an outer area, built and equipped a factory and attracted and paid a labour force. He needed an inner suburban nursery~ The application of town planning principles has destroyed that nursery. The land is zoned residential, and he can't operate there, or it is zoned industrial and he can't compete for it. By destroying the whole sector in which new and innovative industries were nurtured, we have done something like cutting off our legs.

So a discussion of industry leads us to the same point: what the iruier suburbs need is flexibility, not dictated solutions and rigid plans. Many of these dictated solutions spring from the irrelevant or outdated stereotypes which.I looked at first. Only recently the Chairman of the Board of Works, Mr Croxford, has spoken of the need for redevelopment of these areas - and we can only hope that the Board itself is not quite so naive. Resistance to change is not confined to these formal policies and plans: it also springs from what might be called functional momentum. Functional momentum is quite clearly demonstrated in the central city, where mercantile and shipping enterprises still cluster down near the old Customs House and landing stage site which have been irrelevant to them for years - and where the medical profession still cluster about the top of Collins Street, where Dr Godfrey Howitt established himself in 1840. The same thing is to be seen in the inner areas: the doss houses known to Julian Thomas, 'The Vagabond' , in the 1870s mad.e up a sort of circuit for down and outs: however many of the individual establishments have changed, the location of that circuit remains the same. It has been reinforced by a variety of voluntary welfare agencies who now have a vested interest in keeping their clientele conveniently in the same area. In other words, if you want to set yourself up as a hobo in Caulfield or Strathmore, you will find it very difficult - all the action is confined to a limited area established more than a century ago.

Every solution proposed, every plan for the inner suburbs, is once again calculated to resist and frustrate change. The intervention of the Housing Commission is a good instance of this. With all its faults, the Commission no doubt succeeded in housing an increased number of the poor in the inner areas, and in more or less tolerable living conditions. Now that high-rise concrete housing seems to have lost its attraction, flats are falling vacant. Had the Commission housed the poor not in tower blocks but in the existing housing stock, suitably renovated, any surplus at this point could have been peacefully fed back into the market.

Any attempt to preserve accommodation for specific classes is equally misguided. Any attempt to promote large scale conservation and restoration, and hence to establish the middle classes on a permanent rather than a transitory basis may again be damaging. Any rigid zonings will have an ossifying effect - and now that we have environmental monitoring and established environment standards it is high time that .. we looked at performance standards rather than land use zones in at least the inner areas. Freeways and upgrading of roads may be detrimental. The amalgamation and consolidation of sites certainly is.

What gives these suburbs their special capacity for change? I would suggest that there are three factors - not that this can be proved, but that it is strongly supported by analogies with other cities. The first factor is central location - a factor which has declined in importance in recent years as the average mobility of the population has increased, .96.

but may well become more significant _again with fuel shortages. The second factor is fr_agmented ownership,. the patchwork pattern which allows scope for the small entrepreneur and does not open the door to the massive and mindless decisions of large corporations and public institutions. The third and most important factor is the heterogeneous medium density building stock, for there is no form better able to adapt to new uses.

I do not want to speak too strongly against the conservationists. These areas have more than their. share of early buildings and interesting streetscapes. Measures to preserve the external appearance of the buildings will tend to encourage the retention of the existing heterogeneous building stock. The restoration of the exteriors of buildings, as the Glebe Project in Sydney has shown, is not incompatible with low income housing. It might be argued to be incompatible with housing for migrant groups, for we all know of the Mediterranean colour schemes which these migrants have favoured when allowed free rein. Many would perhaps argue that these Mediterranean renovations have their own value and interest, but I do not want to debate.what is essentially a question of subjective opinion. I would merely question whether conservation controls on the exterior of buildings would in reality have discouraged migrant occupation of these areas. Freq~ently, as I understand it, migrants lived in these houses for some time before beginning to revamp them. ·

My argument, then, is that we should not try to impose any rigid or lasting s.olutions upon the inner suburbs. The only intervention required is that which will protect the qualities which give them a capacity for change - fragmented ownership and heterogeneous medium density building stock. This means that town planning controls must be more flexible, institutional expansion must be resisted, and carparking developments and road widening must be stopped. There must be positive disincentives against the amalgamation of sites and even stronger disincentives against redevelopment wherever the existing building stock is capable of re-use. Conservation controls over·the exterior appearance of buildings should be seen as a supporting measure. And most of all, people in the outer suburbs .. should stop worrying about us - they are going to have enough,problems of their own. .97.

DISCUSSION

Speaker: Mr Chairman, a lot of speakers tonight, at least several by my count, seemed to have said something of the same thing. Also, it is something to be sent back to the Lord Mayor as a consensus from this seminar.

I would like to suggest something which you, Mr Chairman, might put up in some form, for this seminar to vote on. It was raised firstly by Michael Jones and secondly, perhaps by default, by Alan Hunt and that is planning, essentially, at the moment in Victoria, is currently the underwriting of capital. I feel that the speakers, particularly Mike Jones, Terry Cocks (by some generous omission - if you can interpret it that way) and David Andrews, to some extent, and also some members of the audience, feel this way. I wonder if it is not unreasonable that such a motion might be considered.

Mr Barr: I am already in receipt of one motion. If you would care to draft out a second one, I am sure we can bring them into the proceedings at the end of the question period.

Mr Forge (National Trust): There has been a great deal·of talk about politics and about transport forms, about finance and so on but no one really talked about the inner suburbs as the colourful, desirable place that I know and love and those are things that I care about.

I just wondered if the speakers would like to comment on that. It does seem· to me that the inner suburbs are an important resource for the entire community not just for the MilesLewises who live there. Not just for other people who have vested interests there.

It is a place where, it seems to me, you have a variety of interests - you have theatres, restaurants, ali sorts of activities that do not flourish in the outer suburbs. Would anyone care to comment on that?

Mr Andrews: I would, Mr Chairman: Most speakers have been saying that, in one way or another. In case I did not make my position clear enough, I would say I love inner suburban Melbourne. I am glad I have lived there in Richmond for about twenty years. Ten years in the Housing Commission piace, just that side of the Yarra opposite where you live!

Dr Lewis: Well, I can only say that I should have stressed the point. But I am quite sure that the inner suburbs do perform a significant cultural role for the outer residents - and the same sort of role as the Collins Street syndromes. It is very difficult to persuade the authorities that people outside these areas have got interests and I .think it should be recognised that if you are destroying the established landmark areas - the areas of interest - you do, in fact, destroy a lot of the roots you have on the tree.

Mr Cocks: I think you generalise rather widely when you say that you like .. the inner suburbs because of these characteristics. I do not think it is being offensive to say that some parts of the inner suburbs would not be desirable places - and that there are many problems. I think one ought to categorise. In fact, if I cast my mind back, the Town and Country Planning Association (and I expect they have representatives here) worked on a very interesting paper on this very subject of allocating areas into housing groups and such like, .breaking the suburbs down. Perhaps that is worth thinking about. L_ .98.

Speaker: Mr Chairman, I have one point to clear up. The Minister made the conunent that public transport facilities would be improved if there were more cross town routes available.

.. I have a resolution I would like to put to the meeting but I would also like to ask the panel for their conunents and that is to what extent does the MMBW liaise with, say, Vic Rail

Mr Taylor: Our arrangements are not directly formal with Vic Rail - your specific question. We are on the Road Planning Liaison Committee, which consists of the Assistant Director of the Ministry of Transport, the Chief Planner of the Board of Works, the Chief Engineer of the Country Roads Board - that is the point where road planning in particular is tied together. As far as the desirability of seeing public transport with cross town routes, we would see this .to be consistent with our desire to see a strong vital inner suburbs. It is more by way of advocacy than ·power.

Mrs Nicholls (Town and Country Planning Association) :

I haye a conunent to make to Mr Taylor and that is in regard to accessibility, which means to be quite able to go from where you are to where the thing you wish to deal with is - in other words, accessibility equals movement. But I would suggest that accessibility actually ought to be thought of as having the thing you want to interact with close at hand, so that accessibility could also be regarded as a type of urban planning. Not as transport planning but as urban planning. I would put it to you that one of the problems of Melbourne is that it has not been planned with the type of accessibility I am talking about. It has been planned all scattered about so that people do have to use their cars to get to the things they want to deal with because they are not clustered around in any way. And this has mostly come about in a period of quite low fuel prices. And I wonder how Melbourne will stand up under its present mode of scattered planning once fuel prices become higher and energy becomes shorter?

Mr Taylor: I did try to explain accessibility to cover your very point. The accessibility I described was both being able to move within the area and being able to enter and leave it. I then went on to say that the way we go about measuring that mobility is in terms of nearness to shops, nearness to schools, nearness to jobs and the like as well as travel costs in terms of time, congestion, fares and so on.

My view of accessibility is, I believe, very much compatible with yours and there is a place for doing something about accessibility solely in terms of town planning, land use planning. I also went on to say that I believe that, as far as possible, we should be encouraging multiple activity centr~~, and again, following your point, I emphasised that this would cut down some motorised trips occurring at the moment - it could make the one trip do several purposes and 'there would also be advantages for getting concentration of movement for public transport. Now therein lies the germ of the answer to the last point, notably what are we going to do in terms of higher fuel ' • prices. I believe we ought to be moving more to a structured system . Speaker: I wanted to ask Dr Lewis to take one of his points a bit further. You were saying one thing we ought not to do in the inner suburbs is to try and freeze them in some role that happens to suit one particular group and we should at least allow them to perform some flexible function. Now, I do not have the details in my mind but I think I am currect in saying that one of .the most recent things happening in the inner suburbs is that the relative land values of the inner suburbs, relative to the outer parts of Melbourne, have escalated as certain groups have moved in. These groups expect .99.

a major capital return. If future changes in the flexible role of the inner city threaten their capital investment, by trying to favour some other social groups who want to live in the inner suburbs in a way that does not maintain that capital investment, it would seem to be likely then that those particular groups who stand to gain, (and who would also be likely to be the most articulate), would want planning in the area to maintain their particular values. That sort of thing is a threat to the kind of proposition you desired. What do you think in view of that?

Dr Lewis: I cannot really answer that properly. I do believe it is suggested that the increase in values is a natural part of these ongoing changes or something like that. I accept that the sort of people who get control of these areas as a result like to get planning .controls that would ossify them in their situation. I prefer to see that avoided by changing the planning system for those areas - that is as I have said by. setting aside land use planning entirely and then it is much harder to impose that form of ossification. I do not mind .how much control you place on the physical building stock of that area, for that control can or would be reversed when pressures change. I think the more you control the existing building stock the better for these areas.

I would like to see the land use planning system eliminated entirely from these areas.

Speaker: With respect to the recent M.M.B.W. report, which I liken to the Mafia investigating crime, I wonder if you think the current.Local Government Inquiry is likely to produce similar results or do you see that as a possible solution to the structural .change of local government and, if not, where do you see that structural change coming from?

Mr Andrews: I think it is Ralph who says in one of his interviews, "people basically know what is wrong with the world" and I think, by and large, the Local Government Department knows what is wrong with local government in the inner suburban areas of Melbourne but has chosen, for various reasons, not to do anything about it. And I suppose that local government is expecting that once again an inquiry will not be altogether fruitless ~nd just end up in a forgotten office pigeon hole .in a pile of dust. We do hope there will be some significant structural change coming forward from the present role, structure and administration inquiry.

All sorts of submissions are going forward representing a diversity of views on local government. we can be no more hopeful than I think we have been on other occasions, when our hopes have been dashed. To be realistic, I think I would have to say, well, it depends whether they want to do a Board of Works all over again or just pigeon hole it and that really is a matter of poli~ics, presumably after the next state election.

Speaker: Well, I would say I think we ought to get to the resolutions because I think that they are a very important part, that we should come to some conclusion about what happened today. I think that what the • Lord Mayor, Cr Rockman, said is very important - that at this seminar are a lot of people who have been to s.eminars before but at this time, I think we should actually produce something.

Speaker: Before we come to the resolutions, could Mr Dunstan sum up for us, please?

/ l .100.

SUMMING UP

Mr Keith Dunstan

I regret to have to tell you that I am a middle-class trendy. I have just moved into the inner suburbs a year ago. I bought a place in South Yarra, which was almost a classic. It cost.more than a new pla~e would cost to p~t up and there are no parking facilities, no garages in our street. So I can tell you what there is - I will try and enumerate them for you - two I.amborginis, three Porsches, a Mercedes Benz and a $36,000 12 cylinder Jaguar. I ask your sympathy that all these unfortunate cars have to st~y out in the rain.

We did have a massage parlour but the activists closed it down but we do have around the corner~ a hotel which I understand is the Gay capital of Melbourne. So that might give you some idea of where the inner suburbs are heading.

To give you something of a summing up! The Lord Mayor gave us the tale of falling population. He told us of the doughnut theory.

The Minister rather backed up the doughnut theory and talked of the magnet attracting people back into the "hole" again.

On the reverse side to that, we had Dr Jones and David Andrews, who were very opposed to the doughnut theory and they gave us - well, we can call it the jam "for God's sake, leave 'em alone' p tart or the lamington. The theory was really

I thought Anne Latreille set the pace of the thing very well indeed. She told us what it is like to live in the inner suburbs. She is only two streets away from me and probably does not have a massage parlour. She listed the people in her street and all around her and made us believe that the inner suburbs were actually occupied by people - something which some of our planners have tended to forget.

Bill Taylor told us the very depressing story about· the future of the motor ca: I had rather hoped myself that within ten years ~e would be using motor cars by dumping them in the bay and using them for the breeding of fish or something .like that but apparently not. He is quite certain that it is going to get worse.

Terry Cocks gave us a dizzy financial/fiscal picture of what is going on. One thing he told us was that he believed in an even balance of old buildings and new and this should be maintained.

Sometime back I became involved in an organisation called the National Distrus· I rather thought that while there were some very sound organisations for preserving .and saving old buildings, there was no good reliable organisation for getting rid of the hideous buildings that we cannot stand.

We gave a number of these gradings: • - A grading for buildings which should be destroyed at once,

- B grading for those which it would be eminently desirable to pull down and perhaps

C for noteworthy for destruction.

I hopeq, along with certain members of the audience here tonight, that the l Fl9 would get an A. The Flinders Street Railway Station would also get an A. .101.

And a few others you might care to think of .

. But tpe one thing I do think came out, in fact, at least four or five of the speakers suggested the.same thing - if there were any possibility of a • consensus of opinion, it would be this: that there is a need for much more consultation. There is a need, as David Andrews pointed out, for an entire new system of community participation.

Andrew Mccutcheon, for example, told the sad story of how local government is ignored and how even comes the situation where two city councils have had to perform on Parliament House steps and hold meetings there in the hope that some Minister would t~ke notice of them.

Graeme Davison talked of the disasters of the past and even the Minister told us a bit of what has happened in the inner city and what could have happened - the almost total destruction of Paddington and Carlton, if the dizzy engineers of the Housing Commission had had their way.

So thi.s surely is the one point where most of us agreed;that even if the inner suburbs are better left alone, what is neede9 is much more sensitivity and much more consultation with the people who live there and as G. K. Chesterton almost said: "Let the people speak that they haven't spoken yet" .

I do not think there is any more point to summing up further than that and I will leave it to those wishing to put resolutions •

•

I L- .102.

DISCUSSION

Mr Barr: I have two resolutions. The first one is moved by Andrew Herington, seconded by Laurie Wilson:

"That this seminar supports the view that traffic is the prime problem confronting the inner suburbs and calls on the Government to abandon further freeway construction and arterial road widening in the inner city and to adopt alternative planning policies with a view to stopping the growth of traffic in the inner city particularly at peak hour".

Could I just say, by way of explanation, that it seems to me quite appropriate for a seminar of this type to include resolutions as part of its proceedings.

I would also like. to suggest that perhaps what comes out of today should not necessarily stop at resolutions.

If members of the various participating organizations or others who do not belong have views about continuing this verbal battle on the planning of the inner suburbs, then they should endeavour to do so. I think they will find the various institutions very receptive.

Do either the mover or the seconder wish to speak to their motion?

Mr Herington (Citizens Against Freeways): I will speak just briefly. Almost all the speakers today ref erred to the problems of traffic in the inner suburbs. It is my view that they do present the greatest threat to people who live in that area and are most often identified by people who live in that area as being their biggest problem. And I think you can see that by the people who have been e·lected in the last few years to local government, almost consistently on platforms that promise to do something about traffic.

I think we can see from what Bill Taylor presented that increasing traffic means decreasing residential amenity - people are moving out and this is contradictory to what the Minister, Mr Hunt, was talking about when he was saying we needed a magnet. The question is what sort of magnet do we need - one that pulls more cars in or one that pulls people in and makes the inner city a good place to live in. I think the answer is that we need people not cars and I think a message that could come very strongly from this seminar of professional and interested people is that we should, once and for all, bury the spectre of freeways that threatens the inner suburbs and start re-directing our attention on the transport issue to solutions such as Margot Nicholls was referring to, that is, provid~ services and · facilities for people in the outer suburbs nearer to their place of residence. We should look more to long term planning solutions rather than simp\,istic solutions and get rid of this whole idea of constructing freeways through the inner suburbs.

Mr Wilson (Committee for Urban Action) : Mr Chairman, I seconded the motion because I believe it reflects the attitudes vented by most of the speakers here this afternoon and this evening and hopefully supported by the audience too.

Mr Taylor: I have to speak against this motion. One of the sentences I skipped over was that I still believe there is a place for freeways in the inner area where their social cost is demonstrably less than the benefit that can be gained .103.

I particularly have in mind the southern link through South Melbourne, which the Government is proceeding with and the westerly leg through the dock area. Both of those freeways could do a great deal for removing through traffic from residential areas and creating an opportunity to channel that • through traffic in socially desirable ways.

The absoluteness of this resolution appalls me.

Cr Rayson (Prahran): How can you (Mr Taylor) justify a freeway going through the dockyard?

Mr Taylor: That particular freeway could do a great deal for getting traffic QUt of the North Melbourne area. That traffic is currently - yes - finding .its way through residential streets. If we had such a bypass route - let us drop the word, "freeway", - another major arterial road through there for through traffic would give us the opportunity at the same time to slam on constraints on traffic filtering through residential areas. Taking them both together, I do not believe the current situation is optimal.

Speaker: Could I ask Mr Taylor whether he feels it is justified to ravage Gardiner's Creek to relieve the problems in Malvern?

Mr Taylor: I am not here to comment on that policy. All I am doing right now is to correct a sentence in my text which I skipped over, which I believe is important to get to this audience because they are being asked to pass a very absolute resolution . It says NO freeways. I am suggesting that at least my text should be made clear because you are going to see it in front of you shortly and you are going to see that sentence.

Mr Barr: I propose to put the motion. (Mr Cocks,. in view of your ability to count, would you please assist me with the numbers). All those in favour of the motion being incorporated into the proceedings?

(The motion was carried 43:23 with numerous abstentions).

The second motion I have is moved by Ms• R.Gilliest, seconded by A. Lyons.

"That this seminar recommend the integration between public transport systems in Victoria, with special reference to the inner city".

There are two methods suggested.

1. "To develop strengthened cross-suburban transport systems including road, rail and air".

2. "To develop fare structures to inc:orporate the use of transfers".

Does anyone wish to make a comment?

Speaker: I think the motion misses the point a little bit. If you look at a transport map of the inner suburbs in Melbourne, you will see that the tram and bus network is particularly good in giving cross-town travel in the inner suburbs, particularly from the Yarra into the central city area and the railway network into Flinders Street. I think the problem is not so much the lack of facilities but rather that the trams and buses in particula have to battle their way through heavy traffic especially during peak periods. And the problem is this lack of priority for public transport vehicles rather than the lack of routes themselves in making mobility by public transport fairly difficult. .104.

• In relation to the fares policy, the Government has set up a Metropolitan Transport Commission which is investigating various aspects of integrating public transport services. One of their first jobs is to look at some integrated fare system for tram, rail and bus. To that extent, I do not • see that the motion says very much. A motion relating to more priority for public transport vehicies would be more relevant.

Speaker: I do not think that there is any problem with road traffic interfering with rail transport and they seem incapable of keeping to a time­ table or, in fact, notifying that a train has been cancelled. I think the motion is quite competent, particularly if the word effective is used in place of integrated.

(Some discussion here was inaudible).

Mr Barr: It is my intention to put the motion. All those in favour? (Again, Mr Cocks, can I call on your fingers and toes).

(The motion was carried).

The third motion is moved by Peter McRae, seconded by Bob Bamford.

"That this gathering publicly voices the opinion that on the basis of the discussions today that

(a) henceforth, planning in Victoria and Melbourne in particular should cease to be made to function to underwrite the interests of capital, and

(b) citizen power, as defined by David Andrews, should be implemen~ed immediately."

Both aspects are in need of some explanation as to their intention. Mr McRae?

Mr McRae: Two speakers have spoken specifically about these matters, Michael Jones and David Andrews. Mr Hunt also spoke on the first issue, by default, rather by what he did not say. That in itself throws some light on what role planning does have in Melbourne. He spoke about recharging the vitality of the C.B.D. Showing his true colours, he inferred the solution was in office uses. That was to be the.key to the whole thing, providing office space etc. etc. and providing the greatest return.on capital. That is not the case any longer.

The second point I am driving at is that the public transport system i£ quite crucial to the operation of the inner areas. It has been planned to run down since the 1950s in the city and it is still being engine~re~ to run down by various persons, known to everybody. We are also seeing.the run down of the country rail network. Also, the effect on the inner areas is exemplified by the proposals for Webb Dock, which is to be almost entirely t' operated by road transport. In fact, almost the entire freight transport industry is being changed from rail to road.

These are two-examples of what I am suggesting, that is that plann~ng underwrites capital.

Mr Bamford: If at first listening, it appears that these are radical motions, I assure you they are not. The first thing that was mentioned by the Planning Minister was about the Gobbo report. I learnt something new about that report and that was that a recommendation from it had been taken by the .105.

• State Government and that was to be that if you could define· a number of possible routes for, say~ a freeway, these should not be displayed. I was later told by a friend that this was because of a phenomenon called "planning blight", that is, that no one would wish to acquire land in those • areas because it was under threat of some bad use. Well, now, that leads me to think that the compensation aspects of the Gobbo recommendations must have failed because i~ people in the area that is threatened are not going to get adequate compensation, that means that the provision has failed. And it further means that capital is looking to invest in areas that are most suitable and you will only get planning blight where you follow the dictates of capital. So, I suggest that the idea that planning underwrite the functions of capital be completely rejected and that something else be substituted in its place and I call that something else "common sense· consensus". Dr Lewis was speaking o·f the necessity for dynamism in the inner suburbs and the thing which most contributes to that, as I understood him to say, was the flexibility as expressed by persons' ability to pay to be in the inner suburbs. Now, again, that is the interests of money vying with the interests of other money, entrenched money, capital, and it can be superseded by part (b) ·, the citizen power where people are encouraged to come together and that sounds like a radical concept but it happens today in Carlton, as close as you can get to it, and that is that there are suggestions for redevelopment being put up in strategic locations, shops and other centres, halls, where people can discuss them and put in their ideas. On those grounds, I commend the motion to you.

Dr Lewis: I do not want to go into defending what I said but it W~~· qu!te different from that. The motion is, in fact, two quite different·' things, both of which I commend in broad principle. I suggest that the motion be re-written as two and that. the public affirmation phrase be deleted.

Mr Barr: Would the mover of the motion care to offer some definition of citizen power, which might make the motion easier to follow?

Mr McRae: Yes, I would suggest that it is effective grass roots participation in the planning process. I accept the suggested rewording and split into two.

Mr Barr: So, the first motion reads

"The planning in Victoria and Melbourne in particular should cease to underwrite the interests of capital".

I put the motion. All those in favour?

(The motion was carried).

The second motion.

"That effective public participation be implemented immediately".

(The motion was carried)

The motions will be incorporated in the proceedings. l .106.

CHAIRMAN'S CONCLUSION

It is,' now time to close the seminar. Before doing so, I have to say some thank yous not the least of which is to you, the audience, for coming • along and spending the time, putting your points of view, listening to the speakers and encouraging the Committee in the course that we set out to follow Thank you very much for spending the time with us today and thank you for your approach.

Secondly, I must thank the Committee itself. It is not an easy thing to set up a seminar and make it flow reasonably smoothly. I think you would agree with me that the Committee has done a very good job and I would like to name them:

Patricia Whately,·· from the Town and Country Planning Board, really picked up the reins of all the hard work, did the dirty jobs and I think much of the success of today falls at your feet, Pat. Chris Benham, from the Board, was the poor man who had to cope with the mail and write out all the receipts and make sure that the money balanced. He is not here at the moment but also he did a very grand job. The other members of the Committee, Warwick Forge, representing the National Trust, Laurie Wilson, Committee for Urban Action~ Lew Sayer, Royal Australian Planning Institute ·and Kevin Greenhatch as usual wearing two hats, Institute of Architects and Town and Country Planning Association, all made major contributions and, of course, I should not leave out John Mitchell and Miles Lewis for their assistance in the work.

I should also like to thank the Proprietor of. the Sir Robert Peel Hotel, Collingwood, for sustaining our efforts and arguments in the formative stages of the seminar. Without his liberal doses, -I think we would have been in trouble.

Lastly, the speakers. To be a speaker enta'ils a great deal of effort, a great deal of thought about your topic, and then you have to get up and sell it to the audience and it is not an easy thing to do. So, to all the~ speakers, a very big thank you indeed.

Thank you.

I.,._____ RESOLUTIONS

1. That this seminar supports the view that traffic is the prime problem confronting the inner suburbs and calls on the Government to abandon further freeway construction and arterial road widening in the inner city and to adopt alternative planning policies with • a view to stopping the growth of traffic in the inner city, particularly at peak hour.

Moved, A. Herington, seconded,. L. Wilson. Carried...... 2. That this seminar reconunends effective integration between public transport systems in Victoria, with special reference to the inner city.

(Suggested two methods

Develop strengthened cross-suburban transport systems including road and rail and air.

Develop fare-structures to incorporate the use of "transfers", as in San Francisco etc (e.g. 25c fare across city for up to· some 15km. 1974 fares))

Moved, R. Gilliest,...• .seconded, ...... A. . . .Lyons...... Carried ...... • 3. Tha~ planning in Victoria and Melbourne in particular should cease to underwrite the interests of capital.

Moved, P. McRae, seconded, R. Bamford. Carried...... o, 4. That effec~~ve public participation be implemented inunediately.

Moved, P. McRae, seconded, R. Bamford. Carried.

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