Eating, drinking Melbourne's heart beats anew

Eating, drinking Melbourne's heart beats anew

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/citys-heart-beats-anew/2005/08/18/1123958182702.html

By Adam Morton
August 19, 2005


The city we know and love, from left, the State Library, Degraves Place, Swanston Street.


MELBOURNE'S heart has been "reconquered" as a place for eating and drinking, study and recreation, and the number of people living in the CBD has risen eight-fold in a decade.

The jump in city dwellers helped lift Swanston Street above Regent Street — London's second-busiest thoroughfare — for daily pedestrian traffic, according to a City of Melbourne report to be released today.

Places for People project manager Jan Gehl, a Danish architect who has been visiting Melbourne for 25 years, said the CBD had transformed from being the hole surrounded by the "doughnut"of suburban dwellers, to the "miracle of the Yarra".

"There will be three times more people sitting and standing and listening and enjoying Melbourne today compared to 10 years ago," Professor Gehl said.

Professor Gehl said the city was a marked contrast to the place of the 1960s and 1970s, when it was considered a mono-functional and useless centre of unco-ordinated high-rise development.

The study found pedestrian traffic in the CBD on weekday evenings nearly doubled to more than 90,000 a day in the decade to 2004.

Other increases include:

■ 275 per cent more outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars.

■ 177 per cent more seats at kerbside cafes.

■ 809 per cent more apartments.

■ 62 per cent more students living and/or being educated in the CBD, up to nearly 82,000.

The length of CBD laneways in use has multiplied by a factor of 10, from 300 metres to 3.43 kilometres, including 500 metres of completely new space. Professor Gehl said Melbourne had increased the quality of its streets, the number of squares, parks and trees, and upgraded trams and lighting.

"If one should make a list of what a city could do to make it more friendly for people and more inviting, most of these things would be in that list," he said.

CBD space has grown since the 1994 Places for People report, now including the part of Southbank to St Kilda Road.

Click on this link for a photo gallery of changes to Melbourne City streets from the 1980's to 2005.

http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2005/08/19/1123958216160.html

CHANGING FACE OF MELBOURNE: 1994-2004
Then Now % Rise
City residents 1008 9375 830
Private residential apartments 736 6692 809
Pedestrian traffic (Sat 6pm-midnight) 88,020 99,420 13
Seats at kerb-side cafes 1940 5380 177
Outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars 95 356 275
Students (learning or living) 50,482 81,732 62
Public space (square metres) 42,260 72,200 71
Lanes, arcades and alleys in use (metres) 300 3430 1043
Pedestrian traffic (weekdays 10am-6pm) 190,772 265,428 39
Pedestrian traffic (weekdays 6pm-midnight) 45,868 90,690 98
Pedestrian traffic (Saturday 10am-6pm) 194,764 212,862 9