Why Are Melbourne's Outer Suburbs So Boring? | Australian Neighbourhood | Life in Australia |

I grew up in Clayton area in South East. I remember back in my teenage years going to the corner shops to buy milk or bread. And also local fish & chips and Pizza outlets. We played with our bikes and skating boards and got refreshing drink from a local shop. All those are now gone, replaced by these Cookie cutter shopping centers.

I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Inner city suburbs were planned in the 1800s when population growth was steady. Point Cook, Truganina, Tarneit, Williams Landing, Wyndham Vale is what you get when a couple hundred thousand people move in over 20 years.

I agree with you. The outer suburbs have a dead feeling especially at night.

If money wasn’t an issue I’d agree with this vid. But good luck trying to buy into Fitzroy or Brunswick these days, hence why many are pushed into outer suburbia - not by choice but by financial necessity.

It's always been this way. Germaine Greer left her Melbourne suburb in the 1960s & moved to London because she said it was stifingly boring & couldn't stand the thought of a lifetime living there.

I can't stand being boxed into crowded spaces or copy and paste home in newer estates so i ended up moving to Tooradin where i have much larger land and trees around my house. The peace and quiet plus room for my cars made it worth the while to commute.

I live in these outer suburbs. All I want to do is leave them.

the outer suburbs also have infrequent public transport and even in electrified trains that only come once an hour on the weekends between caroline springs and melton requiring you to travel on specific times. In the inner suburbs the trams come constantly so it pretty much allows you to just turn up and go. I do not know why anyone would want to live in copied and pasted suburbs that have poor infrastructure for pedestrians. I know it is cheaper to live in the outer suburbs, but at that point I dont see why anyone wouldnt just go to geelong or ballarat

does anyone want to hang around outside lighting and furniture stores in Brunswick and St Kilda?

now imagine the outer suburbs of melbourne being a whole city and then you have townsville, one big sprawling mass of 3 shopping centres and culdesacs.

My daughter and her husband have been living in a cottage in Brunswick for the past 4 years. They drive everywhere and when she was living here in Berwick, walked a lot more and I guarantee you, felt a lot safer. They've just moved this weekend to Queens Road opposite the lake and the first thing she said was, it's so quiet. It depends on the area mate. Personally I would never downsize to an area like Brunswick and I'm glad they're out of there.

Lets talk about prices?

Sadly the same in every major Australian city, including where I am in Perth. From the 60s/70s onwards planning went car centric and mixed use went out the window. We followed the same route as the USA in that regard as they have the same copy/paste suburbia obsession.

Bike paths, parklands, green space interrupting streets is a feature of Casey where I live. Some progress is being made however the local shopping centres are massive and focused on car parking. You just can't do without a car here, though, I hope, the government will relax laws on e-bikes, trike and quadracycles for use within the area and to these shopping centres that will reduce the need for parking and allow for more green-space or even shops. We have to reduce the need for car use locally.

On the topic of urban morphology, during the 1960's, urban planners thought high-rise living was the most modern way to live - we could deal with population growth in an organized manner. So, the massacre began, many neutral-colored block structures were built in inner-city areas to hail in futurism - old was bad, new was good. This idea died by the 70's and inner-city high-rise flats quickly evolved into slums. They were then purchased by governments and rebranded as low-income housing estates. Many grand historical sites were also lost during this period. Thankfully out of this, the Heritage Act was created to protect historical areas that included architecture, parks and streetscapes.

Very well said, there is no foresight in these urban developers. They need to seriously change the way they do things. They need to create neighbourhoods that are pedestrian friendly in the outer suburbs.

not to mention that those places heat up way quicker, the lack of shade from trees, the entire suburb being plastered with concrete and of course the black roofs

Excellent work, makes so much sense!

Guy just discovered that living in a filthy rich, inner city suburbs next to the botanical gardens is nicer than the factory areas in working class outer suburbs. 100 points for the observation!

To be fair, without the outer suburbs, we wouldn't have TISM. Sometimes they completely stuff up in the inner city too (Southbank and Queens Road come to mind). When I lived on Queens Road, the poorly-synchronised traffic lights made it impractical to walk to St Kilda to do my shopping, so I found myself driving to Prahran instead. I did however find myself leaving the car at home at other times. Even getting my car serviced was easy, especially compared to when I lived in Bulleen. I ended up finding a happy median of space and convenience in my current area, though sadly my work is in an infamously car-dominated area (thanks Reg Ansett, where's my helicopter?), so out comes the car (LPG, so it's slightly cheaper and cleaner than petrol). As for the outer suburbs, the biggest issue is that requirements for public transport are so weak. The devs don't have to spend much on it, so they only have to pay for a few bus stops. The older hellscapes (Doncaster, Rowville) get ignored by the government because they're not growing enough (or within marginal electorates). Don't get me started about the state government's role. It's not necessarily out of malice - they don't have as many ways to get revenue anymore since the GST, so the budget is tighter.