This Is What Melbourne's Newest Inner-City Suburb Fishermans Bend Will Look Like in 2050

Plans for the renewal of Fishermans Bend have been in the works for a while now, but just exactly what it is all going to look like has been uncertain. However, the Victorian Government has just released a new framework for the new suburb, and it provides the most fleshed-out vision for it yet.

If you're not familiar with Fishermans Bend, that's because you probably haven't had much reason to give it a visit. As you can see from the map below, it's the space of land below South Melbourne and sandwiched between Port Melbourne and the Yarra. To the south, it's accessible from Yarraville over the West Gate.

At the moment, it's largely industrial — but the Andrews Government plans to turn the 480-hectare site into a brand new suburb, complete with residential housing, commercial buildings, new schools, community centres and plenty of green open space by 2050. According to the Government's newly released Fishermans Bend Framework, when developed, 80,000 people will live in the suburb and the same amount will work there. Labor is calling it Australia's largest urban renewal project.

This new framework completely reworks the previous Liberal Government's rezoning of the area, capping building heights in an attempt to stop the suburb from becoming overdeveloped. To complement this, the Andrews Government has worked a considerable amount of parks and public spaces into its plan — apparently the open space will add up to the equivalent of 60 MCGs. It will also require all new builds to include at least six percent of affordable housing.

The plan is for the suburb to be largely car-free, with residents and workers using bike lanes, walking tracks and public transport instead. While the framework does mention future tram and train connections, these don't appear to be fully worked in with current transport plans yet.

For this all to go ahead, the Andrews Government will have to win at next month's state election. If it does, it will then work with the community and council to develop precinct plans, with the view for the first drafts to be released to the public in the first half of 2019. You can find all the documents and more info — and have your say on the renewal — here.