![\"Sydney](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9543643a40dc316c75d051f75e3055ef1c015a53.jpeg\")
Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller says Sydney has lessons in planning for her home city of Melbourne.James Brickwood<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was funny, in your questions, you said, \u2018What\u2019s it like to come home?\u2019\u201d Miller says, on the phone from Sydney.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon it took about 15 years of not living in Melbourne before I was like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not home any more\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
These sprawling cities have lessons to offer each other, Miller says. But there are some things Sydney just does better.<\/p>\n
Beyond the concrete wasteland<\/p>\n
At a neat park on the Port Melbourne foreshore, a great yellow buoy serves as a repurposed climbing wall for young children.<\/p>\n
Traverse a rope ladder or bridge, and they\u2019ll find themselves in a wooden crow\u2019s nest tower, looking out over Port Phillip Bay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The other side of the tower looks over a behemoth rusted steel wall, running along the perimeter of the neighbouring shipping dock.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecure area \u2013 entry prohibited,\u201d signs proclaim.<\/p>\n
A few hundred metres up the road, at Fishermans Bend, the Yarra River glitters through gaping holes in a chain-link fence. Looking down from the Bolte Bridge in Docklands, there\u2019s little to see beyond the industrial, Miller says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve really built over it all, and kind of forgotten that that\u2019s water,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Sydneysiders are seldom short of a view, Miller says \u2013 but they treat water like gold. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere in the city you\u2019ve got any glimpse at water, it\u2019s about really amplifying that beauty and that access so that everyone can enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related Take, for instance, Barangaroo<\/a>. When Miller first moved to Sydney more than two decades ago, the precinct was an immense concrete wasteland, disused after the then NSW government moved port operations to Port Botany (beside Sydney Airport) in 2003.<\/p>\n Barangaroo is now a six-hectare headland park, sprawling underground cultural venue, waterfront promenade, netted swimming area, and extensive dining and entertainment precinct, which includes Crown Sydney.<\/p>\n The project\u2019s total estimated cost is upwards of $8 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s spectacular,\u201d Miller says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got no shortage of places with grass and trees and a view on any given day in Sydney, whereas, in Melbourne, I\u2019d be hard-pressed [to find the same].<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d go to the Botanic Gardens<\/a>, or I\u2019d go to Birrarung Marr<\/a>, or I\u2019d probably just go inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller will share her ideas for the future of the city at The Age\u2019s Melbourne Assembly conference<\/a> in October, presented in partnership with the University of Melbourne.<\/p>\n By the year 2050, Miller would love to see a reimagined and \u201cre-naturalised\u201d dock in Melbourne. The organisation Regen Melbourne<\/a> is on the right track in championing a revived (and swimmable) Yarra River,<\/a> she says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could extend that idea to go, what would it be like if we reintroduced mangroves and seagrass into the city?\u201d Miller says. \u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019ll need all that docking.<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology could offer some opportunity for land to be given back to nature.\u201d<\/p>\n The Port of Melbourne<\/a> says it has no plans to reduce its footprint as the city\u2019s population grows<\/a>. The port handles more than one-third of Australia\u2019s container trade, about 20 per cent more than Sydney\u2019s Port Botany.<\/p>\n \u201cThe current port footprint, even with technology and innovation, is needed to keep goods moving to and from Victorian consumers and businesses as demand grows,\u201d Port of Melbourne chief executive Saul Cannon says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece shares Miller\u2019s vision for wilder waterways. His council \u2013 a supporting event partner of the Melbourne Assembly<\/a> forum, where Reece will be a speaker \u2013 pieced together grass pontoons<\/a> in the shallows of the Yarra, before floating them onto the river for perching birds and other animals.<\/p>\n Reece imagines swimming pools dotted along the river; the first of which could be in Victoria Harbour, Docklands, in a couple of years, akin to the floating \u201cdrop-in\u201d pool that just opened in east London\u2019s Canary Wharf.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the case of developing our ports and making them areas that are suited for living and nature, Melbourne has really led the way,\u201d Reece says.<\/p>\n \u201cThink about the Docklands<\/a> development around Victoria Harbour and up the Yarra River \u2013 that was an initiative in Melbourne that began almost 30 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s former fellow councillor at the City of Sydney, architect Philip Thalis, takes a dimmer view than Miller of Melbourne\u2019s southern end, describing Southbank<\/a> as \u201cthe most dismal place in urban Australia\u201d. (Reece describes it as a lively suburb, albeit difficult and expensive to retrofit.)<\/p>\n Thalis\u2019 firm, Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, co-designed the original winning plan for the Barangaroo foreshore \u2013 a project he later said evolved into<\/a> the antithesis of the firm\u2019s vision, and a squandered opportunity to make a better Sydney (including by virtue of the \u201cshiny 75-storey casino hotel plonked on the foreshore\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cSouthbank unsuccessfully combines the highest of densities, overlaid on the most miserable mishmash of public spaces,\u201d Thalis says. \u201cIt\u2019s so hostile to walk around, it\u2019s roads dominated and deformed to cater to too much traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n He says Melbourne is a national outlier with its generous street pattern, boulevards, and far wider streets than in Sydney, but they\u2019ve since been overlaid with a \u201cvery large motorway system\u201d, showing a misguided preference for cars.<\/p>\n City of Port Phillip Mayor Alex Makin suggests few places in Melbourne epitomise this more than Fishermans Bend<\/a>, where the Victorian government in 2018 promised new tram routes by 2025.<\/p>\n Since then, not a \u201csingle metre of tram track\u201d has been laid \u2013 and school students are routinely left behind by overcrowded buses running hourly, Makin says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The precinct is Australia\u2019s largest urban renewal area, meant to be home to 80,000 people and an equivalent number of jobs by 2050.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the state government can\u2019t commit to something as basic as a reliable and frequent transport service, how can we strive for any ambition?\u201d Makin says.<\/p>\n He has asked for a meeting on the subject with Premier Ben Carroll, whose government says it has timetabled another 1500 weekly bus services to Fishermans Bend.<\/p>\n The state government has invested almost $198 million into the first stage of the Fishermans Bend innovation precinct project.<\/p>\n The project includes tram extensions and two new heavy rail stations, which don\u2019t yet have a construction date.<\/p>\n Reece says Sydney has borrowed many a thing from Melbourne, from its trams, to inner-city living (with the Hoddle Grid), to emulating its laneway<\/a> and restaurant<\/a> culture.<\/p>\n Melbourne is aiming to grow its tree canopy cover to 40 per cent by 2040 \u2013 \u201cone of the most ambitious targets of any big city in the world\u201d, Reece says \u2013 and will rip up the bitumen<\/a> on its \u201clittle\u201d streets to prioritise pedestrians in the coming decades.<\/p>\n The Victorian government points to the Metro Tunnel<\/a> as the biggest change to Melbourne\u2019s rail network since the City Loop opened four decades ago, and notes some 360,000 new homes are planned by 2051 across designated activity centres<\/a>, which are connected to trains and trams.<\/p>\n But Thalis says the architectural tenets of wide, green spaces and walkability were forgotten in places such as Southbank, Fishermans Bend and Docklands.<\/p>\n When neglected, he says, an unliveable city is created.<\/p>\n Apartment living close to nature<\/p>\n Off Walker Street in Melbourne\u2019s north, a wide footpath between apartments beckons neighbours to the creek.<\/p>\n Follow the footpath beside blooming red bells and creeping bamboo, and they\u2019ll pass two glass-fronted lobbies. One is for social housing tenants, the other for private. Both are indiscernible to passersby.<\/p>\n Down a short staircase, the footpath hugs the banks of the Merri Creek, before wrapping back around to Walker Street in Northcote.<\/p>\n This complex comprises 250 apartments, but the facade here \u201csteps down\u201d to the height of a townhouse, and is set back enough to allow room for tall trees and plants. The nearest tram stop is a minute\u2019s walk; the Westgarth shopping village is five minutes away.<\/p>\n It\u2019s what Australian Institute of Architects Victorian housing committee co-chairs James Legge and Sarah Buckeridge consider \u201cbest practice\u201d \u2013 but projects like it aren\u2019t as commonplace in Melbourne as they are in Sydney.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bit more hit-and-miss here,\u201d says Legge, founding director of Six Degrees Architects, which designed this place.<\/p>\n Buckeridge, co-managing director of architectural firm Hayball, points to Green Square<\/a> in Sydney\u2019s inner south as an example. It\u2019s slated for more than 30,000 new homes by 2030.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more interesting, though, is the ethos behind it, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey thought about the urban block structure, the quality of the streets,\u201d Buckeridge says. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not by accident that the quality of the public space is at a very high level, and that, really, is just as important as the individual building design itself.\u201d<\/p>\n This kind of \u201cgenerational\u201d (albeit, controversial<\/a>) project is the culmination of a legacy of good apartment design policy in NSW, Legge and Buckeridge say, that was heralded by then-premier Bob Carr in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n Carr was an advocate for the sector, incensed by a rise in poorly designed apartment buildings. He convened a forum about it in 2000 and, two years later, legislated what people in the industry still refer to as \u201cSEPP 65\u201d (the State Environmental Planning Policy No.65, since subsumed by the Housing SEPP<\/a>).<\/p>\n The Australian-first policy mandated the role of registered architects in designing all apartment buildings higher than three storeys.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Victoria, you can be a draftsperson and do it,\u201d Legge says. \u201cIt\u2019s less training, basically \u2013 and particularly less design training.\u201d<\/p>\n Victoria went some way to catching up with NSW in 2017, introducing the BADS (Better Apartment Design Standards) to do away with unfurnishable homes, tiny bedrooms, and borrowed lighting and ventilation (whereby windowless rooms can \u201cborrow\u201d light and air from another).<\/p>\n The Carroll government says Victoria has led apartment design reform nationally for almost a decade. Labor is updating the state\u2019s design standards<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve passed the biggest overhaul of Victoria\u2019s planning laws in decades to give more people the opportunity to live close to what matters to them \u2013 while continuing to invest in major projects that will keep people moving,\u201d a government spokesman said.<\/p>\n But the co-chairs of the architects\u2019 housing committee say architectural oversight should be similarly entrenched in Victoria\u2019s system through an existing mechanism \u2013 a panel of experts reviewing projects\u2019 design.<\/p>\n The Victorian government\u2019s architectural office reviews most significant projects and developments through the panel process. Invariably, this leads to better design \u2013 particularly at ground level, which is crucial to how buildings contribute to the quality of the streetscape, Legge and Buckeridge say.<\/p>\n The architects suggest the process should be applied to all significant projects in Melbourne\u2019s new activity centres<\/a>, while Thalis argues NSW\u2019s design rules should be the minimum national standard.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s much better than Victoria\u2019s equivalent BADS, as it prescribes better practice in passive environmental design \u2013 that is, cross-ventilation, sunshine, light to lobbies and landscape area,\u201d Thalis says. <\/p>\n Some architects argue both the Victorian and NSW standards are overprescriptive, as elements forbidden in new projects \u2013 such as windowless bedrooms \u2013 are inherent to warehouse conversions, for instance.<\/p>\n Toby Dean, head of community at not-for-profit developer Nightingale Housing, says projects will need more scope for flexibility in the coming decade.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n He\u2019s glad the BADS put a stop to \u201cshocking\u201d builds of the \u201990s and 2000s \u2013 with shoddy construction, limited access to daylight, and rooms too deep in the plan \u2013 but says the guidelines are aimed at protecting the \u201clowest common denominator\u201d rather than rewarding good design and innovation.<\/p>\n The rules allow people to build standalone homes of any size, but deter new builds of well-designed studios of 30 square metres, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the next 10 years, we\u2019ll probably see really interesting examples of office building conversions, or live-work situations, or adaptive reuse projects,\u201d Dean says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to have some leniency around your apartment design standards because you\u2019re working with the existing footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Views](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/edd4408cdbdbfa9da6cd5c221dfb732f093b7dbc.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Tourists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/49d1fded19d26a42ba17bacbce07dcbc3f3a27e8.jpeg\")
Tourists flock to Hosier Lane, one of Melbourne CBD\u2019s favourite laneways.Eddie Jim<\/p>\n![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9ed38a3053e619aed0b754afc092794db4330d43.jpeg\")
Australian Institute of Architects Victorian housing committee co-chairs Sarah Buckeridge and James Legge.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/d50061da9cfc911d25aeb1b7f8a28be8c42c6362.jpeg\")
The Merri Northcote project at 20 Walker Street, Northcote, in Melbourne\u2019s north.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n
![\"Melbourne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/41f95722398116805e05f60533154af57319728790aefe8d5411a1a36abd2cba.jpeg\")
<\/a>The north-south divide<\/p>\n![\"Melbourne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9acce75ab136156679012724db742fa8dace10d8.jpeg\")
Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece describes Merri Creek as the pride of a community.Justin McManus<\/p>\n