Social housing tower blocks in Melbourne?

Ayse, I've been in the area near the airport in Sydney and believe you me those people should be paid for living there because when a flight goes over, which is constant from all directions the places shake so God help the foundations.

Granted, it never used to be like that before so many flights took over and not far away are those old Aussie properties, which are beautiful. Isn't there a new subway/train station being built in West Sydney ? Leave these people where they are as they're the only ones who'd live with the noise of a new station and be beneath a flight path of A380's.

Witzend 'the projects' in the US have a similar history to our council tower blocks in that they were part of slum-clearance programmes.

Good intentions at the time.

Some of the residents of social housing right by the oldest part of Sydney are being moved on because these houses will make a fortune when resold. Some of the residents have been there all their lives.

Moving poor people on to live in c**p accommodation is the way of the world. It’s shameful!

Why make it so obvious that most of these blocks house " foreigners/blacks ?" That makes it more discriminatory in every way and creates a " them and us " in every township, not only discriminatory but also racist too. I've never understood this mentality within a social environment. It immediately creates a division. Then people wonder why you have hostilities

Those which aren't built for social housing are a hell of a lot different architecturally, you'd be hard-pushed not to notice so why not build them all the same as psychologically it would give an incentive to keep the places up to standard when they're decently presented inside and out.

We have friends in Melbourne - housing is extremely expensive there. When we were last visiting a few years ago there were masses of blocks of new (non social housing) flats going up. But I gather many were targeted at the Chinese or other SE Asian markets - same as has happened in London.

There are poor - or poorer - areas in cities everywhere. In the US as far as I know, they call such social housing blocks ‘the projects’, at least they do where my sister used to live - Cambridge, Massachusetts, next door to Boston.

That area is also by American standards extremely expensive for housing.

It's this " difference " that causes so much unrest. The architects or whoever they are want shooting.

Why make it so damned obvious that it's social housing ? Surely that's discrimination of the highest order ? It's wrong !!

No, I'm not surprised that there is social housing in Australia and yes I do know there are luxurious tower blocks the world over.

Yes, my point was about so much land being available.

A comparable country for land mass is the USA where I've visited many times - never been to Australia although I have two brothers there. In the US you see lots of high-rise in places like NYC, naturally coastal areas are colonised early on and that's were the population rapidly grows. But in places like Georgia, New Mexico and California cheaper social-housing tends not to be tower blocks, but low-rise or mobile homes, because they have the space.

The 60s social tower blocks we have in the UK were erected as a result of slum clearance - a case of build 'em high and cheap.

There are also very luxurious tower blocks Riverwalk

I think you're making two points here, are you?
One is that you're surprised that there could be social housing - yes, there are poor and rich as in all countries.
The cost of housing has gone up quite rapidly too so many cannot afford to buy.

The other point, I think, is why build tower blocks when there is so much land available? This happens in other countries too, eg the USA. I suppose it became a fashion in the 1950s and 1960s and prevented urban sprawl encroaching on agricultural land. Not all the land is fit for farming so what is farmed is needed.
Melbourne has extended out into the bush which brings its own problems with fires.

If you look at pictures of other Australian cities most have a high proportion of high rise buildings, including some very luxurious, some offices like anywhere else.

Although Australia is huge, I’m sure certain parts of it are uninhabitable.

I live in NE Scotland and Aberdeen has many tower blocks, too. I’ve always wondered why they built upwards here when they could have built out without much detriment to the vast hinterland.

I remarked on this yesterday when I posted to Rufus saying you'd have thought with the vast land that there is they'd have built outwards not upwards. What an ugly block of flats and look pokey too. I'm very surprised that such a build was allowed . It spoils the whole image of the country

These tower blocks have been there for many decades. My father was a caretaker at some of them in the 70's and they had been around for many years then. They are also in areas where there is no available land to build any other housing on. People who live there would not be happy to be told they had to move out of the area into somewhere far less convenient for them.

While Australia is a large country and relatively empty the vast majority of settlement is down the east coast and extends only about 100 kilometers inland from the coast.

These days social housing tends to be in a different form but there are still a lot of the towers - or as they were always called housing commission flats.

There are poorer areas in all cities worldwide - that wasn't my point.

We have family in Melbourne and have spent several months there. There are poorer areas in most cities worldwide.