Melbourne’s vertical expansion and the political economies of high-rise residential development

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2019-12, Vol.56 (16), p.3394-3414
• Main Author: Nethercote, Megan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aftermath; Capital; Cities; Competition; Cranes; Density; Economic crisis; Economic growth; Economics; Expansion; Geography; Geopolitics; High density; High rise buildings; Housing; Housing developments; Planners; Political economy; Politics; Property; Radicalism; Residential density; Residential development; Site planning; Skilled workers; Suburban areas; Suburban development; Supply-side economics; Towers; Uncertainty; Urbanization; Zoning ordinances
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098018817225

This article advances understandings of Melbourne’s dramatic vertical expansion over the last decade by attending to the political economies of its high-rise housing development. Melbourne’s major high-rise development in the wake of the financial crisis represents a radical yet poorly understood departure from the city’s traditional patterns of suburban development. This article applies an existing conceptual framework for residential vertical urbanisation informed by heterodox political economy and critical geography. Drawing on secondary sources supplemented by supply-side stakeholder perspectives, the analysis shows how Melbourne’s high-rise development assisted in syphoning significant investor capital into the city. This not only expanded the local housing stock but, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis and later, amid ongoing economic uncertainty, Melbourne’s high-rise construction served both economic and geopolitical/symbolic functions in the city’s ongoing inter-urban competition for hyper mobile flows of capital and highly-skilled workers. Large apartment projects fuelled the Victorian economy and filled state coffers through property-related revenue. Meanwhile, the city’s dramatic vertical expansion helped project a powerful image of Melbourne around the world. Its crane-filled skyline heralded a thriving economy, and its new thicket of towers rendered a striking impression of urbane high-density living. Together these representations helped promote Melbourne as a vibrant, desirable place to live, work, and invest. Looking beyond the planning failures and planning politics identified in planners’ critiques of Melbourne’s vertical expansion, this article showcases the state’s considerable stakes in this development, and its role in smoothing the way for this expansion to occur. 本文提升了对墨尔本过去十年戏剧性垂直扩张的理解，方法是关注其高层住宅开发的政治经济学。在金融危机之后，墨尔本的主要高层建筑开发代表了对这个城市传统郊区发展模式的一种激进的、但我们知之甚少的背离。本文应用现有的住宅垂直城市化概念框架，这一框架的灵感来自非正统政治经济学和批判地理学。利用供应方利益相关者视角的二手资料来源，我们分析显示了墨尔本的高层建筑如何协助将重要的投资者资本纳入该市。这不仅扩大了当地的住房存量，而且在金融危机后不久，随后在经济不确定的情况下，墨尔本的高层建筑在该市所参与的、城市间资本和高技能工人的超级流动性竞争中起到了经济和地缘政治/象征性功能的作用。大型公寓项目推动了维多利亚州的经济发展，并通过与房地产相关的收入填补了国库。与此同时，该市的戏剧性垂直扩张有助于在全球范围内树立墨尔本的强大形象。它密布起重机的天际线述说着蓬勃发展的经济，新的塔楼森林给人们留下了温文尔雅的高密度生活印象。这些形象共同促进了墨尔本成为一个充满活力的，理想的生活、工作和投资场所。本文超越了规划专家们对墨尔本纵向扩张的批评中所说的规划失败和规划政治，展示了该州在这一开发中的巨大投入，以及这种投入在为这种扩张铺平道路方面发挥的作用。