Melbourne Today: August 2010

"Melbourne embarked on an ambitious program of public housing following World War Two, led by the Housing Commission of Victoria. The Housing Commission had been established in 1938, following a campaign by social reformer Oswald Barnett that highlighted the poverty and living conditions in parts of the inner suburbs.

After the war, the Housing Commission built estates for low-income families on the suburban fringes of Melbourne, many using innovative construction techniques with precast concrete. It also instituted many slum reclamation projects in the inner city in the 1960s and early 1970s, demolishing ‘slum’ areas across Melbourne’s inner suburbs.

These run-down areas were replaced with 21 high-rise housing estates dotted around suburbs such as Fitzroy, Richmond, South Melbourne and Carlton. Critics argued that ‘suburbs in the sky’ were hardly an improvement on the neighbourhoods they replaced. Local community resistance to further clearances in the 1970s brought an end to the high-rise program." Museum of Victoria