Move Over High Line, Melbourne's Getting Its First Elevated Park

New York City has the High Line; Paris has the Promenade Plantée; Osaka has the glorious Namba Parks. In dense urban environments, it's always heartening to see green public spaces built on the bones of obsolete industry (both the High Line and Promenade Plantée are built along sections of disused elevated railway tracks). And in 2018, Melbourne will join the list of 'Cool urban metropolises who don't compromise on green space' with its very own elevated public park.

Lendlease has announced plans to develop a 2000sqm public park in the heart of the city, bordered by Collins and Flinders Streets (directly across from Southern Cross Station, with a nice view of the award-winning space slug rooftop). Melbourne Skypark (an apt title that really pulls no punches) is part of a larger development, Melbourne Quarter, a brand new city precinct which will include new offices, homes, shops and hospitality spaces across an entire city block.

Melbourne Skypark will add a much-needed green space to the south end of the CBD, taking the city's solid rooftop culture and making it greener, bigger and — literally — more alive. The park is designed on the principles of biophillia, which is a fancy way of saying the health and well-being value of public parks stem from the instinctive bond between humans and other living things. Basically, if it's green and alive, we're down with it.

Melbourne Quarter — which aims to connect people with nature and improve liveability — isn't just for residents or workers either. Over half of the new 'hood will be free for the public to enjoy, with the Skypark adding sorely needed open green space to the inner city. But it's not the only environmental addition. As well as the Skypark, Lendlease have also announced plans for a new laneway to connect Collins and Flinders Streets, a neighbourhood park and Melbourne Square, a public plaza which will be the most significant public space developed in the CBD since Federation Square in 2002. The world's most liveable city just got a whole lot more liveable.

Melbourne Skypark will open in 2018.