The Heart of the City (1)

Some people who are critical of what is happening in Melbourne have referred to it as the world's most "visitable" city rather than the world's most liveable. Nowhere is this more apparent than in trying to define the heart of the city. When I first moved to Melbourne I thought it was around the Bourke Street Mall and the City Square. But the City Square had it's problems and needed to be "fixed", repeatedly. It is now being fixed, for real, we are told, by building a hotel over part of it to reduce the amount of open space, removing the water wall and putting in a bridge for each of our sister cities around the world.

Daimaru and Melbourne Central (actually just north of central) was the first big development to reshape the way we see our city. The traditional centre of the city kept in touch with a pedestrian bridge over Lonsdale Street, making it almost an extension of Myers.

The Southbank development caused a few problems, the biggest of which was that it was in South Melbourne and was drawing a lot of money out of Melbourne proper. This was nothing that a quick realignment of municipal boundaries couldn't fix. We now have Lloyd's Shed (Crown Casino) and Jeff's Shed (Exhibition Center) extending the development of the south bank of the Yarra River.

How does the CBD compete with this. Turning Swanston Street into a "pedestrian friendly" street (no it's not called Swanston Walk and should never have been according to the mayor) with wider footpaths, no through traffic, sidewalk cafes, street art etc... was a controversial fix on many fronts. Like the City Square there has been much talk about how to fix it. Just recently the council decided (once and for all) that through traffic would not be allowed back into Swanston Street BUT there will be greater access for taxis on top of the nightmare of delivery trucks on the narrower street. Business will be boosted by the opening of some really good shops like Nike and Levi. That'll bring the people back for sure. If you're reading this Ivan, it's really quite simple. All you need is fairy lights (see the previous page) . Somebody obviously left it off the original plans and that's why the project hasn't worked.

But this is not the heart of the city either. There are new developments on the horizon including Federation Square which will be filled with more buzz words than you can poke a stick at and across to the west the "I'll believe it when I see it" Docklands Project complete with a new sports stadium. I bet they change the name of the Docklands Stadium to the Melbourne Docklands Stadium.

If you're not into all of the hype and hysteria that a big city has to offer which I'm not, you'll just have to explore the city to find you own "heart of Melbourne". This next page is mine...