2. Metropolitan Town Planning Commission
- Growth in the Oakleigh/Clayton Corridor
- Housing
- Industry
- Orcharding
- Schools and Community Facilities
- The Metropolitan Town Planning Commission
- Water, Sewerage, Gas and Electricity
- Endnotes
Cars
During the inter-war years, the railway was the focus for growth, both in the Caulfield/Oakleigh/Clayton/Springvale corridor along the line to Dandenong and to the north where another ribbon of development ran out past Box Hill and Blackburn to Ringwood. However, this was changing and the Dandenong Road was probably an equally important traffic route at least by 1945. In 1940, Oakleigh Council asked the Board of Works to install traffic lights at the corner of Dandenong and Warrigal Roads. They refused, but the trend in traffic was clear. In the same year Cr Watkins suggested the name of Dandenong Road through Oakleigh be changed from Broadway to Speedway and in 1941 Cr Hughes chose a motoring analogy to make a point. 'While the Council had Rolls Royce ideas, it must be remembered that it had only Ford funds.' [10]
By the outbreak of World War 2, residents of the area had long been accustomed to speed limits and parking restrictions. As a working class suburb, levels of car ownership were relatively low, but all the major local industries had long changed from horses to motorised transport. Motorised buses replaced the horse drawn variety in the 1920s. There was an associated huge cost in sealing the roads, but Oakleigh Council was not in any hurry to seal residential streets. The major impact was on industrial traffic on Dandenong Road. Never the less, when it came to planning the growth of Melbourne, railway building was again on the agenda.
The Metropolitan Town Planning Commission was set up in 1922 with representatives from the City of Melbourne and the major groups of surrounding municipalities, plus technical experts. In 1925 a representative of the railways was added. The Commission was charged to draw up a plan of development for Melbourne. Looking at the map of Melbourne in 1924 it easy to see why they made the decisions they did about the Oakleigh/Mulgrave area. The two long arms of development along the Oakleigh/Clayton/Springvale/Dandenong axis in the south and along the Box Hill/Ringwood axis in the north enclosed a huge arc of market gardens and orchards, all much nearer to central Melbourne than the outermost suburbs on the two rail lines.
The Commission recommended a new rail line from Darling to Glen Waverley.
The Glen Waverley Railway
In 1926, Parliament agreed to an extension of the Darling line to Glen Waverley at Springvale Road. This was specifically planned as a suburban rail line to open up the area for housing and the Commission was asked to prepare a special report on planning for the area. This they did, and it was dated 6 May 1927. Initially it was to be a confidential report to the Railways Commissioners, and presumably also Parliament. However, the Town Planning Commissioners requested permission to send a copy to the Shire of Mulgrave and this was granted. Importantly, the new rail line was to have no level crossings. At all road junctions it would go over (or under) the road. This was one of the many steps taken in an attempt to ensure that the line was a financial success. The failures of some of the rail lines of the late 1880s had not been forgotten. [11]
The Town Planning Commissioners were at pains to say how co-operative the Shire of Mulgrave was in furthering their plans for the area. They were in favour of relatively low density development of about 20 people per acre and praised the Shire of Mulgrave for introducing a by-law to limit house lot sizes to a minimum of 7,500 square feet. Detailed proposals for the Shire were contained in a series of maps, published in 1929 when the railway had still not opened. These were included in the Commission's Plan of General Development, Melbourne. The Commissioners commented on planning in the Shire of Mulgrave:
"An illustration of the advantages to be gained from the procedure recommended is presented by the recent subdivisional development in the vicinity of the new Darling to Glen Waverley Railway in the Shire of Mulgrave. The Minister of Railways requested this Commission to report on the future development of the area which would be served by this railway, and a special report was issued in 1927. The report, which was presented to the Government and the municipalities, outlined a scheme of development and was accompanied by plans and details of the legislation required.
Although no subsequent action was taken by the Government, the Municipality of Mulgrave adopted the Commission's scheme of development. It has since assiduously applied the meagre provisions of the Local Government Act to its approval of plans of subdivision, with the result that this area has been safeguarded from the undesirable conditions which must follow the unco-ordinated and wrongly-directed subdivison of land. This municipality forwarded all plans of subdivision with, in the region of the scheme to this Commission for report, with the result that many plans which did not conform to the scheme were completely remodelled to agree with it, and were also co-ordinated with neighbouring subdivisions." [12]
The Commission was averse to what it called 'the old checker-board layout' and favoured wide streets, parks and playgrounds. Subdividers who submitted plans were advised to realign and widen roads and could end up with shorter road networks whilst maintaining the number of building lots.[13]
While Mulgrave was quick to adopt the new fashion, even though hardly any houses were built along the newly planned streets, the majority of 1930s Oakleigh and Clayton subdivisions remained resolutely old-fashioned on the checkerboard plan.
Susan Priestley discussed the failure of the Glen Waverley line to be followed by houses and people and has argued that the main reasons why development was held up for fifteen years were the 1929-33 depression and then World War 2. However, development in Oakleigh and Clayton resumed after 1933. A more likely explanation for the failure of development in Mulgrave in the later 1930s is the railway itself.
The line was opened on 5 May 1930, by which time unemployment was at levels not seen since the 1890s. The result was a potential financial disaster for all residents within two miles of the line. They were supposed to fund the cost of the rail line through a special rate. [14] Almost immediately there were problems in making payments and ratepayers banded together to test the legality of having to pay at all. The row dragged on until 1937 when a special government committee recommended writing off the balance owing. Those farmers who sold for subdivision in the late 1920s, before the line was completed, often got good prices, but it is easy to see why buyers were put off between 1930 and 1937. There were perfectly good house sites going elsewhere without the added burden of betterment taxes and construction taxes to pay for the railway.
Those subdivisions that did take place in the 1920s had a rather different tone to subdivisions in Oakleigh and Clayton. Glen Alvie Estates, for instance, planned to develop fifty acres along the lines of a country club, complete with tennis courts and a swimming pool. The Riversdale Golf Club was next door. But subdivisions in South Oakleigh, next to the Metropolitan Golf Club, had no such pretensions. [15]
A New Arterial Road
Besides the railway, the Commission proposed a major arterial road, in addition to Dandenong Road, to serve the Mulgrave area. They pointed out that while in the years 1926-29 traffic leaving the city as a whole had increased by 31%, traffic heading for the eastern suburbs had risen by over 37%.
'When the Commission was planning the area to be served by that new suburban railway, provision was made... for a new arterial road, 12O feet wide, to carry the increased traffic anticipated from these districts.' [16]
The planned route left the city along the north bank of the Yarra and then 'Toughly followed the valley of Gardiners Creek until it reached the Shire of Mulgrave. It then headed east for the Dandenong Hills. Besides carrying traffic from the planned new suburb to the city, it was designed to take tourists out to the Dandenongs. As with the Gippsland railway, the rural sections proved easiest to agree on and were built first. After the war, industrial development in the Dandenong area led to the abandonment of the tourist route idea. Instead, the outer section of this road through Mulgrave was built as a northern supplement to Dandenong Road. The inner section of the Southeast Arterial, as eventually built, followed the Commission's plan quite closely.
The Commission was emphatic about the crucial importance of roads to their proposed new suburbs. Without the financial burden of directly paying for the rail line, building in this area may have gone ahead in the 1930s, despite the depression. As it was, when building did start in earnest after 1945, car owner' ship levels were set to rise dramatically. Despite, or perhaps because of, the Glen Waverley railway, Mulgrave was to be built as a car based suburb.