There's a couple of reasons, and mostly residential that's U/C but now something like 14 hotels and a smattering of commercial towers. Melbourne has some of the highest net office absorption in the country but adjacent CBd precincts attract lower-rise office buildings (and there's 50-100 years worth of inner-city land to things relatively short for offices if the current trend of bigger floorplates continues).
From the 1980s onwards, the City of Melbourne (local municipality that covers the CBD and the immediate areas) was a dead zone and policies started changing on a range of things: commercial building conversions to residential, overall encouragement for residential spaces in the city, lane clean ups and open spaces in them to small retail/eating/drinking establishments. Long story short: the council has successfully altered the very fabric of the centre of the city over many decades, making it attractive not just for commercial development.
Big buildings ultimately are signed off by the Minister for Planning - a state-based role, not a council one. When Liberals (centre-right) are in power, they're your fairly typical centre-right type of government: less regulation, very business-friendly etc and that was typified by the Planning Minister from 2010-2014 who was pretty much responsible for ticking off nearly all the buildings that have either recently completed or still under construction. A Labor government has been in power and they've introduced many different things (Minister still signs off on big projects - those with a GFA more than 25,000sqm - but councils have a greater say).
Australia is quite open to foreign investment (we've been net capital importers since James Cook sailed up the east coast in the 1770s) and many of the residential towers that have been recently completed or under construction would have decent-sized foreign-buyer components but not all. Like what Vancouver's been going through, government here recognises that opening the tap full is not necessarily the best idea and there's been a range of measures at the federal and state level to slow things down (Fed: foreigners cannot buy exiting property anymore, only off the plan, state: tax on foreign purchases/unused apartments lying dormant).
Population growth: Melbourne has been for the past 8 or 9 in the past 10 years been the city seeing the highest population growth (~80,000-100,000 average per year over a decade - it was 120,000 for the financial year ending June 2018). People have to live somewhere.
In summary: local councils seeing benefit of policy changes decades after they were first conceived, state governments at various times opening and closing the tap for new central city development through the planning Ministry and a stable Asian-timezone country that accepts foreign investment all combine to tell, for the most part, the story of what you see under construction / what has been under construction recently.
This list is 99% inner-city but there's also a story of Melbourne's suburbs - the inner and middle-rings mainly - densifying as well. Public transport projects in the pipeline will go along way to making sure suburban development will be just as attractive from 2030 onwards (see Suburban Rail Loop in the
Melbourne PT thread).
db2 on SSC keeps tabs on this list, this is it from
October this year - sorry, no imperial measurement (100m = 328 feet, 150m = ~500 feet, 200m = ~650 feet, 250m = 820 feet, 300m = 984 feet):
Quote:
Originally Posted by db2
Updated height list. Lots of news and action the last couple of days (West Side Place, 435 Bourke). I have done my best to produce an accurate height list for Melbourne town.
- Red, proposed tower, not yet approved
- Purple, approved tower, but project being flipped or project in trouble
- Green, approved tower, not yet under construction
- Blue, under construction,
- Black, completed tower.
- ~ symbol means approximate height, exact height unknown or in dispute.
Order by height above street to roof
- Green Spine East ~356m
- Australia 108 317m
- Eureka Tower 297m
- Aurora Melbourne Central 271m
- West Side Place Tower A 269m
- Prima Pearl 254m
- Green Spine West ~252m
- Rialto 251m
- Queens Place South 251m
- Queens Place North 250m
- Premier Tower 249m
- Victoria One 247m
- West Side Place Tower D 240m
- Swanston Central 237m
- 640 Bourke St 235m
- 55 Clarke St 234m
- Shangri-La by the Gardens 232m
- Melbourne Square T2 231m
- West Side Place Tower C ~230m
- Vision Apartments 229m
- Bourke Place 224m
- 568 Collins 224m
- 120 Collins 220m
- Sapphire by the Gardens 219m
- Light House 218m
- 380 Melbourne 217m
- 158 City Rd 216m
- West Side Place Tower B 211m
- Aspire Melbourne 211m
- Melbourne Central 211m
- 435 Bourke St 210m
- UNO Melbourne 210m
- 88 Melbourne 209m
- 280 Queen St ~207m
- Freshwater Place North 205m
- Eq. Tower 202m
- Melbourne Grand 198m
- Empire Melbourne 197m
- 101 Collins 195m
- Telstra Corp 193m
- Home Southbank 193m
- 80 Collins St North 190m
- 80 Collins St South 190m
- Collins House 190m
- 140 King St 188m
- 268 City Rd 187m
- Abode 318 187m
- 600 Collins St 186m
- Collins Place Sofitel 185m
- Collins Place ANZ 185m
- Melbourne Square T3 179m
- Capital Grand 178m
- 183 A'Beckett St 178m
- Sol Invictus 178m
- Scape Franklin ~175m
- 405 Bourke St 173m
- Avant 172m
- 385 Bourke St 168m
- 63 Exhibition St 171m
- Victorian Police Centre 171m
- Upper West Side Manhattan 170m
- Zen Apartments 168m
- Platinum Tower 167m
- 35 Spring St 166m
- Upper West Side The Fifth 166m
- Southbank Place 166m
- Focus Apartments 166m
- Casselden Place 166m
- Olderfleet 165m
- Ernst & Young Plaza 165m
- SX South Tower 163m
- 530 Collins St 162m
- ANZ Headquarters 162m
- 478 Elizabeth St 161m
- Verve Apartments 159m
- Palladium Tower ~158m
- Wesley Place ~156m
- 87 Queensbridge St 156m
- Paragon 155m
- 500 Bourke St ~154m
- Southbank Central 153m
- Optus Centre 153m
- Crown Towers 153m
- 140 William St 153m
- Collins Square Tower 2 152m
- Marriott Southbank 151m
- Shadow Play 151m
- Aurum on Clarendon 151m
- Urban Workshop 150m
- 555 Collins ~149m
- Melbourne Quarter Tower 147m
- Scape Melbourne 146m
- Collins Arch 146m
- Melbourne Quarter East Tower 143m
- Fulton Lane South 142m
- Melbourne Quarter West Tower 141m
- Marina Tower 140m
- The Peak 140m
- 202 Normanby Rd 140m
- Voyager Yarra's Edge 138m
- VU Tower 135m
- Victoria Market Munro 133m
- Atira at LaTrobe St 131m
- 17 Spring 128m
- Two Melbourne Quarter 128m
- Ibis & Novotel Hotel 125m
- 567 Collins St 125m
- Conservatory 124m
- 295 City Road 123m
- 386 William 121m
- 14 Russell St 120m
- Collins Square Tower 5 111m
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