Top 20 Melbourne suburbs with the largest development pipeline

Top 20 Melbourne suburbs with the largest development pipeline
Alastair TaylorJuly 25, 2018

In stark contrast to our growing database of Sydney projects, Melbourne's been in Urban.com.au's DNA for over five years.  And what a difference it is with postcode 3000 (actually, the suburb name Melbourne, but you know what I mean) leading the pack among the top 20 suburbs across metropolitan Melbourne with the largest development pipeline.

Not to be outdone, Southbank, home to some of the largest skyscrapers (and proposals) in the city comes in second with a 5 figure number in its development pipeline and spilling over from Southbank, South Melbourne takes the third top spot.

Box Hill and Doncaster are two suburbs in the top 10 which stand apart from the trend of much of inner Melbourne ruling the roost and Brunswick, Moonee Ponds, Coburg in that inner-city to middle-ring transition area are present within the top 20.

In fact, beyond the top 20, there are many middle-ring Melbourne suburbs with over 1000 dwellings in the development pipeline including Carnegie (1602), Essendon (1527), North Melbourne (1407) and Maribyrnong (1279).

For a while I've been saying both privately and publicly, Footscray is on the same level as South Yarra - similar distances from the centre of Melbourne and with the rail transport to match - and lo and behold Footscray is well ahead of South Yarra's pipeline numbers at this time.

Collingwood (2668) outstrips Fitzroy (1169, ranked #35) by a long margin and Preston (3369) is way out ahead of all the other suburbs on the High Street / South Morang corridor.

The monster numbers at the top can be explained that the suburb 'Melbourne' applies to St Kilda Road as well as the CBD, however when we look exclusively at postcode 3000, there are still over 18,000 dwellings in the pipeline.

The number of dwellings below are for all projects on the Urban.com.au project database across all four main statuses - Planning Assessment, Approved, Registration & Sales and Under Construction.

Click on a suburb name to view a summary of the development pipeline for each region.

RankSuburbNumber of Dwellings
1Melbourne20,035
2Southbank16,015
3South Melbourne6573
4Footscray6526
5Docklands6276
6Box Hill5645
7West Melbourne4980
8Richmond4402
9South Yarra4124
10Doncaster3808
11Preston3369
12Brunswick3044
13Brunswick East2828
14North Melbourne2793
15Moonee Ponds2749
16Collingwood2668
17St Kilda2618
18Port Melbourne2493
19Coburg1792
20Hawthorn East1757

Alastair Taylor

Alastair Taylor is a co-founder of Urban.com.au. Now a freelance writer, Alastair focuses on the intersection of public transport, public policy and related impacts on medium and high-density development.

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