Images from the suburban fringe
As our cities continue to expand ever outwards, farmland is eventually engulfed with McMansions and urban estates filled with absurdly named streets.
On the fringes of Melbourne, the suburbs continue to expand as they have done for more than 60 years. Piece by piece, farm allotments are subsumed into housing estates filled with peculiarly-named and dangerously narrow streets, ornate lamp posts and dwellings crowded too close to each other. Communal parks substitute for gardens these days in a move that could render The Australian Home Beautiful obsolete. Could these places become the latest incarnation of the Australian ‘ugliness’ that Robyn Boyd wrote about in 1960?
Windswept and dry, the new suburbs have only vacant allotments with promise-filled billboards for state schools. Narrow tracts of grassy land hint at future railway lines that will never be built. Shops are kilometres away; workplaces even further. Building is swift and craftsmanship rare. Trees cannot possibly thrive in the narrow chasms referred-to as “backyards”.
The environment of a new housing estate can seem glum and depressing when compared to the ideals of the garden city movement. Once upon a time, nature was allowed to thrive between the dwellings to produce an amenity that people valued. Now developers enthusiastically cram as many dwellings into a street as possible with the greedy complicity of municipalities. The future is tomorrow’s concern.
I have sought to capture some of the atmosphere of the contemporary housing estate, by photographing the landscapes, constructions and streets. These images come from a random selection of estates in Melbourne’s north and are not intended as a criticism of any developer, development or suburb.
My intention is twofold; to document the contemporary housing estate and to prompt thinking about the types of neighbourhoods that we’re creating.
Comments
2 responses to “Images from the suburban fringe”
Interesting subject!
Sometimes these new communities can work, especially if there’s lots of public space included, but often they don’t. Tiny lots that back onto a railway or freeway make me cringe.
Your photos are are terrific, and add perspective to the post.
Well done!
I was considering writing my own blog on the subject of mid century schools in Victoria being demolished or renovated to a point where they are no longer recognisable as schools of that era and considered inadequate to handle the sophisticated education requirements of the 21st century. Yet on the other hand, houses in NSW are being built that remind the Victorian State educated adult, such as me, of the schools. People are willing to pay $500k plus, depending on the area for these mid century school houses. I said to my husband, who was educated in NSW, that they wouldn’t get away with building houses like that in Victoria. We went shopping for an investment property in Wodonga in 2017, and how wrong I was. There was at least one in every new street. Our daughter likes the style, but no way could I condone us buying a school house, as I call them.