State government admits Docklands was a mistake, gives the mess to City of Melbourne to fix

THE Brumby government will hand significant planning control over Docklands back to the City of Melbourne in an effort to tackle urban design problems that threaten the precinct’s successful evolution into a vibrant inner-city suburb.> > > > > In a decision ratified by the council on Tuesday, the city will take control of all developed parts of the Docklands as early as next week, while planning authority for all areas yet to be developed will remain with the government’s development agency, VicUrban.

via theage.com.au

The article mentions the stadium and Wurundjeri Way as particularly bad disasters, as well as the poor design of the buildings in general, not encouraging pedestrian traffic.

Alarmingly, planning for undeveloped areas will still rest with VicUrban, who seem to be the group responsible for all these planning screwups to begin with. So they’re handing their mistakes to the City to fix, but they’re still going to make more of them. This will change nothing. And many of the mistakes have already been made, and there’s little that can be done to fix them - aside from bulldozing the whole works and starting again.

The really sad thing about all this is that it’s creating a negative perception in the public’s mind about high density living. When done well (Vancouver’s CBD, for example) it works really quite well. But Docklands wasn’t planned very well at all, and, like St Kilda Road, much of it is beyond repair. Good luck, City of Melbourne.