Parkland has become a hot button topic in the inner Melbourne suburb of Footscray, with 2016 seeing members of the local community lobbying state and local government to allow surplus railway land to be turned over to the public as open space, and not sold for development. But on Buckley Street the government is doing something even more shameful – selling off former parkland as a development site.
If there is one thing that property developers love to spruik, it is the proximity of their new housing estate to public transport. In the case of Regional Rail Link, the companies developing land adjacent to the new railway line didn’t even have to wait for the trains to start running.
Melbourne’s property developers have a habit of stealing names from New York when branding their new apartment complexes.. However they have managed to outdo themselves, with the “Manhattan Place” housing estate in the outer western suburb of Tarneit.
In Australia it is common to find local property developers spruiking their latest high-rise apartment development to investors with Asian backgrounds – just look at Melbourne’s annual Chinese New Year festival. So where else do developers advertise?
Each year Melbourne’s holds a Chinese New Year Festival, and for the Year of the Dragon things were no different, with the streets of Chinatown being blocked off on January 29 to make way for the festivities. All of the traditional Chinese New Year attractions were there, but a few more commercial ones.
