Modest Melbourne
February 26th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
All over Melbourne are signs proclaiming it the “World’s Most Livable City,” which struck me as a funny thing to boast about. I don’t know, it’s just such a modest superlative. Melbourne—it’s extremely… inhabitable!
Melbourne’s lack of civic bluster seems appropriate, however. For a city of its size, there really is nothing instantly identifiable about it, no particular landmark that screams “Melbourne!” to the rest of the world. Even the 91-storey Eureka Tower, the world’s tallest residential building, has a strange way of just blending into the skyline. It’s the most shy and retiring skyscraper I think I’ve ever seen. Standing right next to it, you hardly realise it’s there. Nothing at all like being right underneath Kuala Lumpur’s imposing, futuristic Petronas Towers, as I was a couple of weeks earlier.
But the things is, I don’t get the impression Melburnians want their city to be any other way. Melbourne’s charms reside at street level—cool shops and galleries and places to eat and music venues, all in pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods or hidden down narrow pathways. And what better way to get around a city than by tram? (Trams seem to me a sine qua non for the ‘liveable city’ concept.) In any case, Melbourne doesn’t assault you with its appeal, but I, as a visitor, had the pervasive feeling that there was a lot of stuff going on that I wanted to know more about. By my third day there, the thought popped into my head almost as if by magic: I could really imagine living in this place.
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