One day we will knock on Sydney’s door, having devoured Canberra without even noticing
It’s unique in Australia’s coastal city landscape, unbounded by silliness like sparkling harbours or warm Indian Oceans. It has scope to expand unimpeded to the north, west and east, steamrolling the Dandenongs and perhaps, one day, constructing a land bridge to Tassie.
No other Australian city has Melbourne’s endlessness. To drive from Sunbury in the north-west to Pakenham in the south-east takes in more than 100 kilometres of metropolitan road – almost twice the distance from eastern Sydney to Penrith. One can drive practically forever and still be in the land of oat milk and tennis. There have been times, living here, when I’ve felt as though Melbourne is all that exists.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics – which initiated this recent change – the Significant Urban Area includes “all contiguous urban centres with more than 10,000 people”. Greater Sydney still boasts more people than Greater Melbourne, by a measure of several hundred thousand, but where we will succeed is in the deliberate planning of boundary towns that become suburbs – see Caroline Springs, Craigieburn, Pakenham and Truganina.
All we have to do is build houses in the next suburb along. We don’t even have to service them with trains or schools. We can simply chop up some farmland into 600sqm blocks and expand Melbourne for ever.
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