Why didn't the Australian major cities sprawl quite the same way that US cities do?

[destroycreate]

Nearly the same size as the US geographically, but at 4% the population size. Still, looking at Sydney and Melbourne, they considerably denser and more walkable than US equivalents. It's very interesting to me that they don't have crazy auto-centric sprawl as bad as we do in these two cities given that there was more than enough land to go around. I may be totally wrong, so feel free to call me out.

[SIGSEGV]

Driving on the left is harder. What countries that drive on the left sprawl? (Maybe ZA?)

More seriously, I suspect differences in structure of municipal government are probably a a big reason.

[craigs]

Are Sydney and Melbourne "considerably denser and more walkable than US equivalents," though?

[xzmattzx]

Could it be for the same reason that almost every Australian city is crammed in along the coast, where inland is generally inaccessible? Are there major inland rivers that provide all the drinking water you could want and/or major inland shipping routes? There does not appear to be an Australian equivalent to Atlanta or even Nashville or Charlotte, located hours inland from the ocean. Canberra is the only city that comes to mind, but as the national capital, it is not just any other city.

[IluvATX]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Driving on the left is harder. What countries that drive on the left sprawl? (Maybe ZA?)

More seriously, I suspect differences in structure of municipal government are probably a a big reason.

India

[Fabricio JF]

Melbourne's CBD is very inviting to walk around and interact in a very pleasant way. Of the American cities I visited, I had similar experiences: Brickel-Downtown Miami, Loop Chicago and NYC with two cores in which I still had time to walk between them, along the very walkable 5th Avenue.

What I experienced in Melbourne that was different from all the other western cities I visited was mainly the cultural aspect. I can find more similarities between Chicago and Miami than any of them with Melbourne.

The car-oriented way is present in all of them as the intelligent aspect of allowing pedestrians to circulate through their cores as well. It's a matter of the difference of styles between countries that can make a huge difference in the final result for a visitor.

[pdxtex]

I spent two weeks over there in September, Sydney and Brisbane. Sydney felt like tropical Toronto to me. Brisbane snakes along a river but has a skinny, very tall CBD. It kind of reminded me of San Diego. Sydney was very walkable and fun. Can't wait to go back.

[nec209]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Nearly the same size as the US geographically, but at 4% the population size. Still, looking at Sydney and Melbourne, they considerably denser and more walkable than US equivalents. It's very interesting to me that they don't have crazy auto-centric sprawl as bad as we do in these two cities given that there was more than enough land to go around. I may be totally wrong, so feel free to call me out.

What makes Australia cities or suburbs more dense? In Canada the houses are closer together, lots of townhomes, and high rise apartments.

Do you have lot of townhomes or high rise apartments?

In the US suburbs more houses and more houses and more houses and odd low rise apartments here and there but not many.

[ssiguy]

Australian cities have pleasant and walkable downtowns partly due to their good suburban rail systems and not suffering from US's white flight.

They are denser than American cities but that's not saying much. Australian {and NZ} cities are probably the most sprawling in the world after the US with huge freeway systems, low density housing outside the CBD for miles on end. Only Sydney is slightly more densified probably due to it's astronomical cost of living forcing people into smaller and relatively more affordable housing types.

[craigs]

I am genuinely curious if the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas are "considerably denser than US equivalents."

Wikipedia has the Sydney metropolitan area with 5,297,089 residents within 4,775.2 square miles. That is a population density of 1,120 persons per square mile. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has the Melbourne metropolitan area with 5,031,195 residents within 3,858.3 square miles. That is a population density of 1,304 persons per square mile.

So for comparison's sake, what are the "US equivalents" to the two most populous metropolitan areas in Australia? The two most populous metropolitan areas in the US?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by craigs

I am genuinely curious if the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas are "considerably denser than US equivalents."

Wikipedia has the Sydney metropolitan area with 5,297,089 residents within 4,775.2 square miles. That is a population density of 1,120 persons per square mile. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has the Melbourne metropolitan area with 5,031,195 residents within 3,858.3 square miles. That is a population density of 1,304 persons per square mile.

So for comparison's sake, what are the "US equivalents" to the two most populous metropolitan areas in Australia? The two most populous metropolitan areas in the US?

Greater Boston is about 1,400/sq mi and the 9-county Bay Area is about 1,110/sq mi so similar to Melbourne and Sydney, respectively. They would certainly rank among our denser urban areas for sure. New York and LA are the only two that are significantly denser.

[craigs]

Melbourne is the second-most populous metropolitan area in Australia (and the densest major metro); the Los Angeles MSA is the second-most populous in the US, and also the densest major metro. Therefore, they are equivalent.

The Los Angeles MSA had a 2020 population of 13,200,998 residents in 4,857 square miles. That amounts to a population density of 2,718 persons per square mile--more than double that of Melbourne.

[JManc]

I don't know if it's fair to compare LA, a megacity, to Melbourne which is about the size of Phoenix.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by JManc

I don't know if it's fair to compare LA, a megacity, to Melbourne which is about the size of Phoenix.

So if we are not going to compare each nation's second-largest and densest major metropoles, then what sort of subjective comparison shall we employ to show the outcome that we prefer?

[tayser]

Melbourne sprawled around its two rail networks. Both rail networks are still here and didn't disappear last century. The tram network is pretty much what we loosely refer to the inner-city (it stretches into some middle-ring suburbs).

The train network is radial and stretches out to the fringe/out suburbs in all directions. Since its inception, it has been about bringing people in over much longer distances than the tram network to the centre of town (the CBD). Eg. Pakenham is 60km south-east of the CBD, and is a suburb that has electric trains.

All the investment in the past 10-15 years in the metropolitan rail network has been about modernising infrastructure (a big part: separating rail from road at level crossings, a fair bit of track duplication and also building a new dedicated path through the centre of the city [MM1 - Melbourne Metro Tunnel]) and building toward service changes that will likely see outer suburbs have trains every 10 minutes.

The SRL project is about creating an orbital rail route through the middle-ring of suburbs so those intersecting nodes (with the existing radial network) can further develop (as many have already started properly increasing density over the past 2 decades).

Other future projects are going to augment existing lines that run into the city and then back out (on the same route) into the suburbs and turn them into giant cross-town lines. This is what the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project is doing to three lines (Pakenham/Cranbourne in the south-east to Sunbury in the north-west - eventually a 4th will be built: the airport line that'll balance the track pair out on both east and west sides of the city).

The likely next major rail project will change the way the City Loop works by creating a giant north-south cross-town line out of two existing lines and another giant north-to-east crosstown line with another pair of existing lines. (all four of these lines will eventually intersect with the SRL).

To say or claim or infer that we're not as sprawly as the US is hard to prove but one thing that is 100% different in Australia is that state governments (not city-based agencieS) run PT projects and services and therefore they can take a metropolitan-wide view (always have, always will), not an individual region (i.e one city/local council area) view.

It's at the point now that we're finally getting major upgrades and (crosses fingers) major service upgrades that when they implement land-use planning changes (which is underway), many different existing suburbs across the entire metropolitan area are doing to keep on getting more dense along the radial rail network (and by 2035 suburb to suburb rail journeys will start to be possible as the first phase of the SRL opens).

[Fabricio JF]

This more holistic government vision of the PT is interesting, bringing results in terms of bringing improvements to the entire urban area of the metropolis.

Recently, Melbourne overtook Sydney in population. Before this overtake, Mel visibly had a denser and more robust CBD, while Sydney was more sprawling and the process of densification of the business area was more delayed. This appears to have had an impact on attracting new opportunities in the job market and attracting internal migration and immigration.

There is the factor that Melbourne is considered more cultural than Sydney, also being more attractive and, relatively, not having as high housing prices. It seems that it is indeed a city that had a vision to grow and put it into practice to become the largest city in Australia.

A robust railway system has been useful to me in cities with more than one CBD, such as NYC, where even a visitor needs to consider traveling this way to be able to carry out tasks on the trips. Thanks to this I was able to visit Uptown, Midtown and Downtown, without losing my areas of interest. But I didn't leave Manhattan, which alone could be the size of a World City.

Leaving the focus as a visitor and entering the focus as an inhabitant, if these intermodal transport systems are necessary for cities, for megacities these systems are sine qua non. These are cities where it is not possible to think about getting around just as a pedestrian or a car driver, without some inconvenience in doing so.

Thinking about American cities that are facing these challenges, as they are also growing, I would actually put Phoenix and perhaps Houston as good examples of transformations that can interfere with urban planning and with more similarity in relation to Melbourne. I was only at the Houston airport recently, but I had the foresight to notice that things seem to be picking up a lot there with works at the airport going on in full swing.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by craigs

Melbourne is the second-most populous metropolitan area in Australia (and the densest major metro); the Los Angeles MSA is the second-most populous in the US, and also the densest major metro. Therefore, they are equivalent.

The Los Angeles MSA had a 2020 population of 13,200,998 residents in 4,857 square miles. That amounts to a population density of 2,718 persons per square mile--more than double that of Melbourne.

That comparison doesn't make sense. Los Angeles is like 5x times denser than Atlanta. Melbourne is average in Australia.

American cities do sprawl way more than Australian and the gap is widening.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Fabricio JF

There is the factor that Melbourne is considered more cultural than Sydney, also being more attractive and, relatively, not having as high housing prices. It seems that it is indeed a city that had a vision to grow and put it into practice to become the largest city in Australia.

You make some really good points, though while Melbourne is generally considered more "cultured" than Sydney, not sure about it being widely considered more "attractive". Not in terms of natural setting, anyway. Maybe when it comes to built form, but of course that's a question of personal taste.

[Cirrus]

They didn't have a gigantic federal Interstate highway program, and didn't have racially-motivated white flight.

They had highways and suburban flight, yes, but not to the same extent because the policies and culture didn't promote them as aggressively.

[Fabricio JF]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You make some really good points, though while Melbourne is generally considered more "cultured" than Sydney, not sure about it being widely considered more "attractive". Not in terms of natural setting, anyway. Maybe when it comes to built form, but of course that's a question of personal taste.

Thanks. I thought more about the word attraction in the context of attracting the attention of more people who went to live there. If I talked about my taste I would feel subjective, because I think Sydney is incredibly beautiful too.

Some prefer one, others prefer another and others prefer other options like Brisbane + Goldcoast.

I started to become interested in Melbourne in 2015, when I visited Miami for the first time and had booming projects there and Rio before hosting the Summer Olympics.

When I saw the architectural new projects in Melbourne and started comparing them, for example, with those in Miami, I realized that Melbourne was even more daring when it came to transformation. This changed my apathetic perception of Melbourne and I started to feel the desire to visit.