Melbourne has a huge urban sprawl. It extends more than 50 kilometers east to west and more than 70 kilometers north to south. This is due to the Australian Dream. The Australian Dream is own a conventional suburban house on a quarter-acre plot with a garden. This shows social status and independence. This dream has caused many people to move out of the inner city of Melbourne.
Gentrification occurred during the late 1970's and early 1980's in Melbourne. The economy of Melbourne was bad, immigration numbers were down and population growth was slow. The inner city of Melbourne needed to be made more attractive. Inner city buildings were torn down and new multistory office buildings and hotels were built. Also the CBD was promoted for both new businesses and retail.
One man named Bernard Barret has proposed a theory about the reason the inner city became run down. He believes that it occurred because that is how the city was set up. The poor and working class moved to the inner city so they could be close to their jobs in the CBD and surrounding industrial inner suburbs of North Melbourne, Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Richmond, South Melbourne and Port Melbourne. These areas developed as working class during the 19th century and were doomed to become slums. The theory of gentrification states that the upper class once lived in this section of the city and then moved into the suburbs and the poor move in to the section that the rich left. This was not the case in Melbourne. The factories attracted these working class folk. (Burnley Urbanization in Australia, 139) The gentrification of Melbourne has been a success but there is still a lot of work occuring to bring people back into the city. This includes the building of many multi-story residential buildings.