Fixing Melbourne's problems: What would you do?

Michael Short

Over the weekend we published a ranking and description of each of Melbourne's 312 established suburbs. Today here in The (Ideas) Zone we are giving you a community forum to share and debate ideas about making Melbourne a better place in which to live and work.

It is a fundamental element of our series, entitled Our Liveable City, about the quality of life in a metropolis that, despite repeatedly being named the world's most liveable city, has problems that if left unsolved will hurt hundreds of thousands of people as the population continues to surge and age.

Ranking Melbourne's suburbs

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Ranking Melbourne's suburbs

Rankings are a highly subjective process, and researchers stress this Melbourne liveability study is about the quality of suburbs and not about the people who live in them.

Just follow the prompts at the end of this piece to leave your questions and comments for the panel of experts listed below, and for each other. It's our city - our ideas should be at the centre of its evolution.

You are also warmly invited to upload from your mobile phone photographs of what you reckon are the best and/or worst aspects of your neighbourhood. You can do that here:

The rankings were determined by assessing each suburb on 15 criteria including transport, crime, and access to schools, parks, shops and cafes. For the first time, mobile telephone coverage and access to the internet were included. Because liveability is so subjective - one person's preferences can be another's anathema - we have also given you a calculator so that ou can adjust the criteria to precisely reflect your values and preferences. Here it is:

We have commissioned and presented comprehensive coverage of this study every five years since 2005. Key things have become apparent:

The suburbs to the west and the north are increasingly attractive, a welcome offset to the long-running real-estate dominance of those to the east and south.
The rankings are dominated by suburbs close to the city's centre.
Melbourne is evolving from a primarily suburban place to an urban metropolis.
There is a need to significantly increase the number of medium-density dwellings in the suburbs within 20 kilometres of the city's centre.
The lack of public transport in many outer parts of Melbourne is one of our biggest public policy and liveability problems. There are clear indications of the solution, though: the rise of the west and the north has in part been driven by better bus services. Elsewhere, congestion caused by inadequate public transport has dragged suburbs down the list. It is evident that a large and ongoing investment in public transport is required to underpin and fuel Melbourne economically and socially.

The panel of experts who will be online throughout the day are:

Adam Terrill, senior principal town planner at Tract Consultants, and one of the two men who have compiled the rankings for us since 2005.
Daniel Terrill, a director of Deloitte Economics, the firm that creates the rankings for us. Dan is Adam's brother.
Dr Carolyn Whitzman, Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Roz Hansen, a member of the Urban Planning Advisory Board at University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University.
Lucinda Hartley, a landscape architect, urbanist, placemaker and social entrepreneur and co-founder and chief executive of CoDesign Studio.
Tamsin O'Neill, co-founder and editorial chief of green magazine.
James Lamour-Reid, director of Planisphere, president of the Planning Institute of Australia's Victorian Division and a board member of the Victorian Local Governance Association.
Bill Chandler, director of Chandler Consulting Services. Bill has long experience in city planning, transport and urban design.
Tom Bodycomb, publisher of green magazine and Treadlie magazine, which promotes and explores the use of bicycles as a key part of urban transport.
Dr Peter Fisher, Adjunct Professor at RMIT's University's School of Global, Urban & Social Studies.

Liveability is indeed such a subjective notion. And it is critical to our very wellbeing, to the opportunity we have to explore life's potential for meaning and joy.

So, what matters to you? What works in your neighbourhood? What do we need from here to make Melbourne a place of opportunity for everybody?

Over to you - you are welcome to participate.

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