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Opinion
July 22, 2026 — 5:00am
The recent debate over the proposed Lendlease office tower above the new Town Hall Metro Station opposite Flinders Street Station has focused on the building, its overshadowing, wind impacts and the proposal to almost double the existing 40-metre height limit to 76 metres.
As a former Melbourne City architect and designer of Melbourne’s 1985 Strategy Plan that led to the reactivation of the CBD and its laneways, I recognise these are legitimate concerns. But they are not the central issue. The real question is whether Melbourne is prepared to dismantle a planning principle that has helped make it one of the world’s most admired cities.
The 40-metre height controls in the retail core of the Hoddle Grid are not a historical accident. They are one of the reasons Melbourne possesses a character unlike almost any other city. That character emerged from 19th-century land speculation. Melbourne’s unusually large city blocks were progressively subdivided to increase their commercial value. Those subdivisions required service access and connections through the blocks, creating the network of lanes and arcades that now make up our pedestrian network and have become one of the city’s defining characteristics.
But the lanes’ role as connectors is only part of the story. What makes central Melbourne unique is the fine-grained pattern of ownership and development that those subdivisions created. Hundreds of small buildings, narrow frontages and independent tenancies have supported an extraordinary diversity of businesses, cafes, restaurants, bars, galleries and specialist retailing. The city’s celebrated laneways are not simply attractive public spaces; they are the physical expression of a built form that has evolved over more than 150 years.
This fine grain cannot be easily recreated, nor can it survive if the economic pressures generated by much taller buildings fundamentally alter land values and redevelopment patterns.
For many decades, 40 metres was effectively the maximum height throughout the Hoddle Grid. It was only after the Olympics, in the early 1960s, in a bid for a “modern city” that height limits were largely removed, leaving a relatively small area – principally between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets – where the lower scale remained.
The decision in the 1985 Strategy Plan to retain those lower height controls was deliberate. It was an urban design strategy to support the retail core. It recognised that Melbourne’s strength lay in its local character of laneways and human-scale development, a pattern not seen in many other global cities.
The vision of that plan, produced by the City of Melbourne, was to transform Melbourne from a traditional Central Business District into a Central Activities District – a city where people would choose to live, learn, visit, and enjoy themselves, as well as work. A conscious and fundamental part of that strategy was protecting the character of the retail core while encouraging greater intensity in appropriate locations elsewhere in the central city.
The results have exceeded expectations. The central city residential population has grown from fewer than 700 dwellings in 1985 to well over 45,000 today. Restaurants, universities, cultural institutions, entertainment venues and small businesses have flourished alongside office employment. Melbourne’s international reputation has grown not because it has copied other cities, but because it offers one of the world’s richest and most distinctive urban experiences. That reputation was reinforced by Melbourne’s recent number one ranking in the Time Out survey of cities.
That success should not be taken for granted, which is why the Lendlease proposal deserves scrutiny. Lendlease argues that the proposal represents the type of development Melbourne needs. But demand for commercial office space changed fundamentally following COVID-19 and the widespread adoption of hybrid working. The city’s future prosperity is increasingly dependent on the diversity of activities that now occur in the central city, such as education, hospitality and entertainment, rather than on office floor space alone.
The proposal also raises another important public policy question. Lendlease acquired the site under a planning regime that limited development to 40 metres. If approval is granted for a 76-metre building, the value of the site will increase dramatically. That increase would not result from additional investment or innovation by the developer; it would arise only because the government chose to grant additional development rights. Such planning decisions create significant windfall gains. If additional height is in the public interest, the community should expect an equally significant public benefit in return.
But even that misses the larger issue. The question is not simply whether one building can be made taller. It is whether this proposal establishes a precedent that ultimately erodes the planning framework responsible for one of Melbourne’s greatest strengths.
Cities accumulate their character slowly but can lose it surprisingly quickly. Collins Place provides a cautionary example, cited in the 1985 plan itself: its international-style design demolished the character of the block to create an inward-facing shopping mall. This loss later led to a requirement that new developments protect lanes and provide active frontages along their street boundaries.
The remaining 40-metre height controls protect the economic and physical conditions that have allowed Melbourne’s celebrated laneways and mixed uses to flourish. Once those conditions are progressively removed, they cannot be recreated.
Every generation inherits a city shaped by the decisions of those before it. Our responsibility is not simply to maximise the development potential of individual sites. It is to preserve the qualities that make Melbourne unmistakably Melbourne. The value of that inheritance is far greater than the windfall profit generated by a single development. This proposal is the latest test of whether Melbourne still believes that.
Rob Adams AM is director of Adams Urban and was one of the principal authors of the City of Melbourne’s 1985 Strategy Plan. He served in senior design leadership roles at the City of Melbourne from 1983 to 2023, including as director of city design and city architect.
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