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angelopetraglia
07-04-2016, 12:11 PM
Surely we are in the best position to capitalise on this mega Melbourne trend. With the right long term strategy we should be a powerhouse club.

See below:

Melbourne victory on western front keeps Australian dream alive

• THE AUSTRALIAN
• APRIL 7, 2016 12:00AM
• SAVE



There is a powerful demographic transformation under way in Australia that will continue to play out for another generation. One of Australia’s largest cities is re-¬balancing its urban form to deliver a long-term shift in the demand for housing, infrastructure and commercial property.

This is a once-in-a-generation property transformation and it’s taking place right now in Melbourne. Yes, Melbourne, that rustbelt city that couldn’t hold on to its state bank in the early 1990s is now this nation’s property powerhouse. Why? Well that’d be ¬because the city’s demographic weighting is shifting from the east to the west.

For 160 years Melbourne’s suburbia pushed east into the soft ¬alluvial soils of the market gardens, the orchards and the dairy farms that led to Lilydale and -beyond to the Dandenong Ranges. Then in the late 20th century the mighty Maroondah corridor bumped into the hills and the city’s growth deflected south into the Cranbourne-Berwick-Pakenham corridor.

But then in the late 1990s something odd happened: the city lurched in a different direction. The completion of the Western Ring Road in 1998 was part of the reason but it was more than this. The eastern push of car-based Melbourne had simply reached the limits of commutability at Pakenham, 55km from the CBD.

The city’s far-more-accessible western edge started to look mighty attractive and especially with new suburbs like Caroline Springs, west of Deer Park, and Point Cook and Truganina on the Geelong-facing front all located barely 35km from the CBD. Sure, the west’s treeless volcanic plain and sewage ponds created development challenges, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome with good land-use planning and a robust planting schedule.

All of a sudden Melbourne ¬delivered something that Sydney could not deliver: affordability and accessibility. House and land packages on Melbourne’s western edge start at the mid-$300,000s and are less than 40km from the CBD. The best Sydney can offer in the affordable-housing space is mid-$500,000s at Kellyville, 45km from the city centre.

Melbourne has added more people than Sydney every year this century, challenging the demographic dominance of the harbour city that had ruled since Federation. And the trend continues. Figures released by the ABS last week show Melbourne adding 89,000 residents, versus 81,000 for Sydney, over the year to June 2015. But the significance of the Melbourne ascendancy is more than the volume of growth, it is the city’s shift from the east to the west.

The infrastructure underpinnings of Melbourne’s urban mass need to be rethought: new railway lines (regional rail link), new freeways (Western Ring Road upgrade), new river crossing solutions (Western Distributor), new and expanded shopping centres, industrial space and office parks. And whole new suburbs must now be conceived and ¬delivered.

In the year to June 2015 the City of Melton and the adjacent City of Wyndham added 15,300 residents, making this “western front” the fastest growing region in Australia. The Gold Coast held this title every year during the late 20th century, but the Coast’s annual growth has contracted to 11,000.

Melbourne’s northern front (Hume and Whittlesea) added 13,900, while the southeast corridor (Casey and Cardinia) added 12,900 over the same year. Sydney offers annual growth of 11,000 in the west (Blacktown and Penrith) and of 12,500 in the southwest (Liverpool, Campbelltown and Camden).

The great commuter corridors of metropolitan Australia have for a generation reinforced the existing urban form: Brisbane to the north and south, Perth to the north and south, Sydney to the north, south and west. And all this, of course, makes perfect planning sense since new growth leverages off the community’s investment in existing foundation infrastructure.

But Melbourne is different. Here is a city that is reconfiguring its urban form and where the west is virgin territory. Everything has to be imagined from scratch. Melbourne used to push east but it is now shifting its demographic weight rather like an elephant getting more comfortable as it rouses from a bit of a lie down on the African savannah. Every shuffle of Melbourne’s heaving urban mass creates localised demand for new housing, new railway lines, new motorways and new workplaces.

Melbourne’s development front isn’t hard to see and nor is it unclear as to where things are headed. Thanks to the urban growth boundary the trajectory of development within Melton and Wyndham is neatly corralled for the balance of this decade and into the next.

By the middle of the 2030s, as Melbourne passes the six million mark, the western front now connecting Melton and Wyndham will have fused into a single urban coagulation not unlike the city’s eastern side. The western front’s Hopkins Road, for example, could evolve into something like the west’s equivalent of the east’s Springvale Road.

Why should business have faith in the future of Melbourne’s west? Because Melbourne’s west is this nation’s last untamed urban frontier. There is nothing quite like Melbourne’s great east-to-west switcheroo that is planned, or that is even likely to be planned, for at least a generation, if not two. Perth isn’t going to push east. Brisbane will not reach out to Toowoomba. Sydney cannot push east.

If Australia is to top 40 million by mid-century; if Melbourne is to approach eight million by 2050; then a fair proportion of this net additional demographic weight will land on the patch of dirt that lies within the urban growth boundary and bounded by Caroline Springs, Melton and the northern edge of Werribee.

Not only will Melbourne rebalance in the first-half of the 21st century, but in so doing it will offer what Sydney cannot offer or will not offer, and that is housing ¬affordability. And the reason why Sydney cannot offer competitive housing affordability is because it can no longer deliver developable land within 40km of the CBD.

If Sydney wanted to compete in this space then strategic planners should have reimagined Sydney as a Dallas-Fort Worth binary city, probably inclusive of a bigger Parramatta, from the 1970s onwards. Such a strategy would have opened up Wollondilly to urban¬isation within commutable distance of one of greater Sydney’s two CBDs.

Not that this “lost opportunity” will worry Sydney; that city will continue its trajectory as a global city attracting global knowledge workers and it will allow Melbourne to accommodate those who cannot afford to live in Australia’s Manhattan.

Melbourne, on the other hand, will continue to do as it has always done and that is deliver on the Australian dream of home ownership. But rather than deliver this dream exclusively through the quarter-acre blocks of the eastern suburbs, Melbourne will reimagine the dream in the west.

This raises an interesting question: which city — global exclusive Sydney or broad inclusive Melbourne — will ultimately deliver the better lifestyle and opportunities to its residents?

The taming of Melbourne’s west is a break-point in the ultra-long-term visioning of the two greatest cities on the Australian continent.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner and is an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School.

F'scary
07-04-2016, 12:40 PM
I guess the name change from FFC to Western Bulldogs ties in well with the changing physical demographics.

Eastdog
07-04-2016, 01:30 PM
Very interesting article thanks for posting angelopetraglia.

Twodogs
07-04-2016, 03:35 PM
No. We obviously have to pour money into Western Sydney and the Gold Coast. More money because it's not working for some reason.

1eyedog
07-04-2016, 03:44 PM
A very large percentage of people buying through the growth corridor (Williams Landing, Tarneit, Wyndham Vale, Laverton etc). are new immigrants with no AFL history. We have to affect a massive cultural shift to really cash in on these numbers if they are going to bear fruit for the football club. Yes there is a massive population increase in the West, but it is the wrong cultural demographic to be relevant to us.

I'm not saying we can't affect change, but the change will be at a generational level rather than short / medium term ones.

Twodogs
07-04-2016, 05:03 PM
A very large percentage of people buying through the growth corridor (Williams Landing, Tarneit, Wyndham Vale, Laverton etc). are new immigrants with no AFL history. We have to affect a massive cultural shift to really cash in on these numbers if they are going to bear fruit for the football club. Yes there is a massive population increase in the West, but it is the wrong cultural demographic to be relevant to us.

I'm not saying we can't affect change, but the change will be at a generational level rather than short / medium term ones.

A premiership cup to parade around the streets up there would be handy. Or four.

Eastdog
07-04-2016, 05:13 PM
A premiership cup to parade around the streets up there would be handy. Or four.

For sure it would definitely help.

merantau
07-04-2016, 06:05 PM
It is really important that we reach out to these new arrivals and the quickest way to do that is win - win a flag. Nothing succeeds like success. Go Dogs!
Angelo Petraglia was a good pick up for us and a great favourite among supporters.

Twodogs
07-04-2016, 07:09 PM
Yep. Angelo was great. Kicked a goal at Windy hill that bounced at right angles with a huge leg break. Kicked off a heroic comeback from 5 or 6 goals behind to win. 1987 I think.

angelopetraglia
07-04-2016, 07:35 PM
I was born in Australian but both my parents were born overseas. My Dad fell in love with the game and he didn't immigrate here until he was 11 and his father would not of known what a Sherrin was if it hit him in the face. I'm sure that is common amongst many die hard AFL fans.

25% of Australians were born overseas. People who live in this town, particularly those who are young are always a large chance to fall in love with this great game that we love. This city lives and breathes the game and your are forced into choosing a team even if you don't like the game just to survive in Melbourne. AFL is massive part of what makes this city tick.

In this Western corridor the Western Bulldogs have to be a realistic shot at building a large following from all these type of residents (and they are not all immigrants). We need to have the right strategies in place to ensure we expose our brand and build links to the community but like many have mentioned, nothing works like success. If we can build sustained success that results in a Premiership or two we can and should be a powerhouse of this competition.

Hawthorn when playing out at Waverley did a great job in converting the huge population that was moving into that part of the world (Outer SE Melbourne) into long term fans (remember, they nearly merged and were broke). Why not the Bulldogs?

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. - Michelangelo

merantau
07-04-2016, 08:08 PM
Couldn't agree more with your sentiments Angelo. Aussie rules IS a massive element in the cultural make up of Melbourne. Imagine an visitor to Melbourne seeing this on a Herald Sun banner outside a newsagent on Friday morning: "Pies shock Daicos out." Totally incomprehensible to the outsider but pregnant with meaning to anyone in Melbourne with even the slightest interest in football. I've spent the last decade working with newly arrived migrants and refugees. I encourage them to take an interest in AFL and to choose a team, preferably Bulldogs. In that way they can always be part of the conversation. I tell every Karen person I meet (there are now about 750 in Bendigo's Karen community) they should barrack for us because our colours are the same as the Karen national flag. There are a lot of Karen living in the West now. I hope to see some playing for us in the next few years.

Eastdog
07-04-2016, 08:10 PM
Yes so true angelopetraglia. We live and breath footy in our city. Premiership success will go a long way into getting the people over whether they are residing in the west or not. I'm out in the east myself and been a Doggies supporter from the early 2000s onward and just love this club and the spirit.

Ghost Dog
08-04-2016, 10:53 AM
The dogs do a better job than most in this area, re new arrivals. When I was in Geelong I don't think they had any sort of interaction with new arrivals. North are pretty good as well.
Once upon a time, arrivals would get some sort of induction to society, via hostels or social clubs. Young people now just start mixing it up from the word go. Sport can play a really important role in transmitting social values.

bornadog
08-04-2016, 11:18 AM
Building up a supporter base starts with the kids. It is very difficult to change Adults if they already follow a team or they have arrived from a country where they followed a different sport like Soccer, Rugby or cricket. However, you can't give up either, so you continually have to be in their face.

The kids get on board when you are successful, and once they grow up and earn their own income, they buy memberships. Kids that were 7, 8 10 years old in 2008-2010 are now most likely working and buying memberships. Imagine if we won a premiership in 1997, or 2009.

Also with the kids, they have to be interested in the game, so school programmes must involve Footy, Auskick must be in the area and clubs must have competitions for kids, and we have to be in there. Perhaps giving kids free Bulldog gear etc.

My father came to Australia in 1950, and eventually moved to Footscray. With his mates they fell in love with FFC and started going to games. Of course they were rewarded with a premiership in 1954. Eventually, once he was married and had kids, he would take us to matches from around the age of 4 years old. Those days it was hard to take kids with limited seating etc, but I do remember sitting on his shoulders watching games.

When I was a kid, I had a footy in my hands all the time, however, growing up in West Sunshine (after we moved from Footscray) a new suburb in the 1960s, there were no Australian rules footy clubs in the area. We played footy at school, but nothing on the weekends. There was a soccer club set up by newly arrived migrants. I played one season as a 10 year old, but really wanted to play footy. This situation needs to be stopped in areas in this growing corridor or you will lose these kids to soccer as their parents will push them towards those sports and not footy.


It is a slow build, but success is what will get us a bigger supporter base, as well as on going programmes, clinics, regular games etc. With women's footy growing, the same thing must happen there as after all they are 50% of supporters.

Go Dogs!

Eastdog
08-04-2016, 03:02 PM
Good post BAD. Things like the East meets West Day are important as it certainly has recently been more geared to engaging the kids and needs to be given more promotion to get the word out there much more.

always right
08-04-2016, 03:25 PM
Last week I saw a family of four all fully decked out in their bulldogs gear at the game.....all of them from an Asian background. I love seeing this.

And it wasn't Lin Jong's family.

Bulldog4life
08-04-2016, 07:06 PM
Last week I saw a family of four all fully decked out in their bulldogs gear at the game.....all of them from an Asian background. I love seeing this.

And it wasn't Lin Jong's family.

Yes AR I also enjoy seeing other nationalities barracking at the footy for the doggies. Good feeling.

Eastdog
08-04-2016, 07:09 PM
Yes AR I also enjoy seeing other nationalities barracking at the footy for the doggies. Good feeling.

Me too as well. It is great to see when I go to the footy.

merantau
08-04-2016, 08:19 PM
Back in the 80s I often used to see a Chinese/Aussie guy in the outer at Footscray. I got talking to him. He came to Melbourne under the Colombo Plan and started barracking for the Dogs in '54.

Eastdog
08-04-2016, 08:21 PM
Back in the 80s I often used to see a Chinese/Aussie guy in the outer at Footscray. I got talking to him. He came to Melbourne under the Colombo Plan and started barracking for the Dogs in '54.

The western suburbs is a diverse region with many nationalities and overall our city is very diverse with nationalities from everywhere around the world living here. I was born and bred in Australia myself but my background is Southern European.

Twodogs
08-04-2016, 09:27 PM
Last week I saw a family of four all fully decked out in their bulldogs gear at the game.....all of them from an Asian background. I love seeing this.

And it wasn't Lin Jong's family.

One of the best things I ever saw was a mum playing kick to kick with her kids outside Telstra one day. She was Muslim and had most of the traditional clothes but with a sleeveless bulldog Guernsey discreetly tucked away underneath.

merantau
09-04-2016, 06:27 AM
When I lived in Brunswick there were some Lebanese background kids who used to play kick to kick in the street. They barracked for Richmond and had very strong views about other teams. All other teams were "shit" but interstate teams were "shitter". Made me think: kids haven't mastered the nuances of English grammar but they're up to speed re what means to be a Victorian.

Twodogs
09-04-2016, 07:38 AM
They get it.

Eastdog
13-10-2016, 05:24 PM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/bernard-salt-demographer/melbourne-population-flip-all-out-all-change/news-story/7bb89cb4fa1b3e04f475dff6aed5df30

The Australian 12:00AM October 13, 2016

BERNARD SALT
Columnist

Melbourne is doing what no other Australian city is doing: flipping.

The focus of the southern capital’s growth for 160 years was east towards the Dandenong Ranges and then southeast towards Cranbourne, Pakenham and Berwick.

However, Melbourne’s future growth lies nowhere in the east but everywhere in the west and north. New tracts of developable residential land west of Deer Park, north of Hoppers Crossing and north of Broadmeadows are taking Melbourne in an entirely different *!direction.

On the one hand this can be viewed as the mere machinations of a city’s changing demography. But on an the other hand this flip-city act represents perhaps the greatest shift in capital city property values since the completion of the Harbour Bridge opened up Sydney’s north shore in the 1930s.

But the land deals in the pathway of Melbourne’s western, southwestern and northern surges have long been done. The big players are right now carving new residential estates from Tarneit and Truganina to Plumpton, Delahey and Craigieburn.

And yes, there are infrastructure plays that will help unlock and deliver fluidity to the west. The Westgate Bridge will need to be replicated in form or in function. The Western Ring Road will need to and indeed is being upgraded.

Hipsters have already colonised Yarraville and I am told there have been beard sightings on The Strand at Williamstown. Not only that but Sunshine is surely a hipster hotspot in waiting: all that ethnic eclecticism; all that industrial chic authenticity. Mark my words.

But all of this is a mere chimera. The main game in property revaluation has yet to play out. And partly, I suspect, because no-one has put all the pieces together in Melbourne’s extraordinary flip-city reconfiguration.

Melbourne is lopsided because the locals have always preferred the undulating hills of the east over the flat basalt plains of the west. This meant railway lines evolved to harness the east’s commuter reserves. There are 10 lines serving the east from Flinders Street, namely (clockwise): South Morang, Hurstbridge, Lilydale, Belgrave, Alamein, Glen Waverley, Pakenham, Cranbourne, Frankston and Sandringham.

These lines channel commuters from three-quarters of Melbourne’s population mass into Flinders Street, which now manages around 30 million passengers a year, up from 25 million less than a decade ago.

Melbourne’s workers and city-shoppers have always spilt out of Flinders Street and made a beeline to Collins Street offices and retail stores (Myer and David Jones) in Bourke Street. So intense are these ant tracks that over time a series of arcades have evolved to allow shoppers to get to Bourke Street via the Block Arcade, The Royal Arcade, The Causeway, Port Phillip Arcade, the Degraves Street Subway and others.

But about a decade ago Melbourne’s growth began flipping. The city’s southeast growth municipalities of Casey and Cardinia began giving way to the west’s power couple, the municipalities of Wyndham and Melton, as Victoria’s and then Australia’s growth hotspot. Bolt on the City of Hume to the north and Melbourne’s flip is underway, delivering more and more commuters into Southern Cross station in the process.


The west’s flat plains may have been shunned by Melburnians for more than a century but this is where the focus of metropolitan growth will remain in the first half of the 21st century. And the reason is simple: Melbourne’s western growth front offers affordable housing that is closer to the CBD than the eastern and southeastern edges. The Melbourne flip was always going to happen; it’s happening now and it’s written into the city’s strategic plan to 2050.

This is important because Melbourne’s new western growth front is serviced by railway lines that connect not into Flinders Street but into Southern Cross, including lines to (clockwise): Williamstown, Werribee, Geelong, Melton, Sunbury, Craigieburn and Upfield. Spencer Street, the name of Southern Cross’s predecessor station, was always Flinders Street’s less glamorous cousin.

Southern Cross, Spencer Street’s reincarnation, not only wrangles suburban commuters form the burgeoning west and north but it also snares bus interchange travellers to the airport and beyond, and the entirety of the Victoria’s rural railway system. Melbourne visitors from Bendigo, Ballarat, Mildura and Bairnsdale alight at Southern Cross. In this regard the new Southern Cross station is more like a sleeping beauty that has been reimagined … and it ain’t going back to the way it was.

The completion of the Regional Rail Link in 2015 accentuated the western flip by streaming commuters from new stations such as Tarneit and Wyndham Vale into Southern Cross, whose patronage now tops 25 million, up from barely 13 million almost a decade ago. Make no mistake, Southern Cross is stalking Flinders Street for supremacy as the point of access to CBD offices, shops and other attractions.


If, by the middle of the 2020s, Southern Cross was to deliver, say, 35 million commuters and Flinders Street only 33 million, then new retail space must be developed either within Southern Cross and/or in the precinct.

In a highest and best use of land consideration, office space gives way to retail space, so Melbourne’s retail anchors would then contort to capture the new foot-traffic hot spots.

It is true that the proposed Melbourne metro tunnel will divert some of the west’s rising commuter flows to new stations along the CBD spine, but most will channel through to Southern Cross to get to workplaces in Docklands and Collins Street West.

Residential property values around new stations at Melbourne University and the Domain in particular will reflect the premium associated with access to the best jobs and cultural infrastructure in the state of Victoria.

No capital city has been transformed the way the Melbourne CBD will be transformed by the city’s demography-inspired flip leading to a power shift from Flinders Street to Southern Cross.

The commuter flows tell the story of a rising force that is unstoppable. Pump more people into the catchment of railway lines that feed into Southern Cross and the CBD’s primary access point and property valuations will shift from the gracious arcades around Flinders Street to the pulsing heart of Southern Cross station.

Melbourne at eight million people by mid-century will be serviced by two landmark railways stations just as London and Paris at eight and 10 million today are serviced by several big stations.

The question is whether well before mid-century Melbourne won’t also have a second CBD, possibly based around new technology and located somewhere along the longest urban corridor at say Box Hill or at, say, Monash-Chadstone.

Meantime it is not possible to retain old CBD configurations and property valuations when a city is taken from four million residents through to five million and beyond. Melbourne is expanding in a new direction; the CBD will expand in a new direction.

It’s time to think about the way in which CBD property values will be reshaped by the reconfiguration of the greater metropolitan area of Melbourne. And one of the first signs to watch out for in this story of the rising influence of the west will be the sighting of hipsters in places like Sunshine.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner and an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School. Research and mapping by Cody Phelan.

bsalt@kpmg.com.au

1eyedog
13-10-2016, 10:24 PM
When I lived in Brunswick there were some Lebanese background kids who used to play kick to kick in the street. They barracked for Richmond and had very strong views about other teams. All other teams were "shit" but interstate teams were "shitter". Made me think: kids haven't mastered the nuances of English grammar but they're up to speed re what means to be a Victorian.

No Lebs in Brunswick now moved to Coburg North. All beards in Brunswick. Beards and the middle class.

angelopetraglia
13-10-2016, 10:31 PM
We are the Premiers and 'cool' team with Australia's fastest growing area on our doorstep. Massive opportunity if we get more right than wrong over the next few years. We can become a powerhouse of this competition.

MrMahatma
14-10-2016, 12:28 AM
We are the Premiers and 'cool' team with Australia's fastest growing area on our doorstep. Massive opportunity if we get more right than wrong over the next few years. We can become a powerhouse of this competition.

As a marketer who loves this club, I've gotta say we've done everything right (ok, some PR disasters but that's footy and young men) over the past few years. The name change to broaden our market, the bringing in of Footscray VFL and the new/old guernsey/logo to ensure our roots are maintained, the style of play we adopt (IE: Not Ross Lyon stuff) have positioned us really well. Now a bit of fate has kicked in with a flag and the Etihad stadium purchase by the AFL (and what timing that is - 5 years from now who knows what our crowds would be, but we know the next few years at least we'll have solid crowds at home).

I made the (entirely biased) comment last Friday to director of one of the ad agencies we use that the Western Bulldogs will be a powerhouse club in 10 years. I stated my case and I won him over.

I also think the signing of Jong has as much to do with business as it does with football. Don't be surprised to see us become an even more culturally diverse list if the opportunity presents itself.

We've had a few really watershed moments in the life of our club, this is another. We really can change the club for the next 100 years with some good management and solid on field performances (I don't even think we need a dynasty of 3+ flags).

Much of what has occurred has been due to our past 2 presidents. The promotional side of the club should also be commended though. Whether there was a change in marketing management 2 or 3 years ago, or things just fell into place, I don't know. But the whole Bulldogs brand look and feel, the social media activity, the documentaries... everything has been really clever and supports us being a club that people will like, and that kids will choose to support. Hats off to all involved.

Eastdog
15-10-2016, 03:12 PM
No Lebs in Brunswick now moved to Coburg North. All beards in Brunswick. Beards and the middle class.

A lot of the suburbs now in the inner north and west now are increasing in value but still relatively more affordable compared to suburbs out in the east. Northcote, Thornbury, Brunswick, Coburg etc are a suburbs in the inner north that comes to mind and Footscray, Yarraville, Newport in the inner west. Recently as well both the suburbs Fawkner in the north and Sunshine in the west had their first $1 million houses.

Twodogs
15-10-2016, 03:48 PM
We are the Premiers and 'cool' team with Australia's fastest growing area on our doorstep. Massive opportunity if we get more right than wrong over the next few years. We can become a powerhouse of this competition.


We can really parlay this flag if we can make all that huge area from the inner west out to Werribee and Melton feel part of it. I dunno how though. Take the cup to schools and convert the kids, have parades something like that I guess.

boydogs
15-10-2016, 07:19 PM
We can really parlay this flag if we can make all that huge area from the inner west out to Werribee and Melton feel part of it. I dunno how though. Take the cup to schools and convert the kids, have parades something like that I guess.

Yep, double down on community visits