Thread 2821952

Why are Australian cities so beautiful? Melbourne literally looks like it's out of 2100.
What went so right here?

>>2821952 (OP)
Personally I think America is the only country that got skylines right because they've been slowly and organically building up for the past century plus and have the mixture of architecture and cool old buildings. Australia is ok, looks like China, just a bunch of glassy new buildings.

>>2822099
>slowly and organically building up for the past century plus
have australian cities not been doing this too? did they just spring up out of the ground 10 years ago?
>mixture of architecture and cool old buildings
melbourne is the same from what i remember when i visited, same as all the other big australian cities. every street you go down in the CBD has cool old buildings intermixed with newer buildings.

>>2821952 (OP)
White people. Cape Town and San Francisco were beautiful too before brown and black people.

>>2822272
>have australian cities not been doing this too? did they just spring up out of the ground 10 years ago?
Not seeing any old skyscrapers there

>>2822099
Thats Pittsburgh Plate Glass building really carries that particular skyline, its a lovely building

>>2822099
this is one of the ugliest skylines in america. if you wanted to make a point you should have posted chicago

>>2822099
As someone who lived in Pittsburgh, the buildings in downtown look like some buildings made in the beta version of Minecraft. Just look at that yellow building in the center. It's foul.

Why do Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney have so many skyscrapers? Australia barely has 20 million people yet these 3 cities combined have more skyscrapers than top 5 American cities (excluding NYC) combined and Australian economy is mostly based on raw resources

>>2822536
Because they only have three large cities?

>>2822536
There's a lot of disagreement on exactly how many skyscapers (buildings over 150 m) American cities have, but a city like Houston has 36/40/58 skyscrapers. That's on par with Sydney.

>>2822316
Look at some other cities, they have far worse taking up bigger roles

>>2822536
Untrue

>>2822272
no, Australia was a rural backwater until the Sydney olympics in 2000

>>2821952 (OP)
Looks like some lame Midwestern US city trying to LARP as a Chinese city.

>>2823342
It's incredible how Chinese cities have taken the lead in urban design.

>>2821952 (OP)
Australia's major cities destroyed huge quantities of their Victorian architecture, and what survives gives a tantalising glimpse of what might've been in terms of balancing history and modernity.

The capital, Canberra, is an absolutely foul place that is most remindful of Brasilia.

>>2823654
>Brasilia
Brasilia is nice tho

The terrain and environment plays a big part in a skyline’s appeal.
The Pittsburgh example shows a view from a nearby (small) mountain with lushness, and the city footprint surrounded by rivers and some nice older bridges.
Look at a city like Dallas or Houston, nothing but flat land and concrete surrounding it.

>>2823654
i spent a night in canberra once on a motorcycle trip
thoroughly strange place, eerie feel to it
centre of town was deserted on a weekend evening
that said the war memorial and attached museum was very good

>>2821952 (OP)
>melbourne
you mean Mumbai'ourne?

>>2823682
Chicago has Lake Michigan

>>2822536
I'd imagine it's mainly because we only have 5-10 actual cities (with 2 cities having >1/3 of our population). Idk about Sydney but Melbourne has "adapted" by having a lot of density within the city center and also expanding as far out as possible. It's pretty strange in my opinion because you have this very dense center with so many skyscrapers, but once you leave the CBD almost all of the buildings are small 1-2 storey flats and so on.
It's sort of the opposite of European cities, where most buildings are a few storeys tall but there aren't many skyscrapers or detached houses. Here you mainly have skyscrapers or detached houses, with fewer 3-6 storey apartment buildings.

>>2822316
>NOOO WHY IS IT ORDERLY AND SYMMETRICAL
>REAL BUILDINGS NEED TO BE ASYMMETRICAL AND USE 10 DIFFERENT FACADE MATERIALS
Why are nuAmericans like this

>>2822536
That's just... completely untrue

Chicago
>137 skyscrapers

Melbourne
>78 skyscrapers

Sydney
>51 skyscrapers

And Brisbane didn't even make the list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_the_most_skyscrapers#By_city_proper

If you took Australia's tallest building and put it in Chicago, it wouldn't even crack the city's top 5.

>>2824182
Why did you pass through Canberra?

>>2823342
>LARP as a Chinese city
China invented nothing. The buildings are copies of US work or built by US architects. Even my favorite building in China, Jin Mao in Shanghai, was designed by Chicago architects. I'm looking forward to great Chinese architecture that doesn't slavishly copy the west.

Situation is just like Singapore.

Preservation of green space at the expense of banning vital housing developments, just like the US there's a massive belt of souless, featureless, Mc designed to house as few people as possible and many parts of the city are run down and repair and renovation is banned by the local government, they actually want many areas to collapse or burn down.

Racial segregation is huge and there are whole areas of cities where English is not spoken and local migrants won't even acknowledge the existence of other groups.

Despite the extreme wealth of Australia, living pressures are shocking and people who earn 50,000 USD/year are often found living in relative squalour, unable to afford essential goods and services. as a traveler you can delay a lot of these costs, but even backpackers here for a few months start getting hit with the actual living costs.

>>2822536
Australian cities basically banned medium density developments. It was that utopian idea of a skyscraper surrounded by farmland. They quickly found that it takes longer to get an elevator from the 30th floor to the ground then it does to drive a kilometer down the road. So a lot of these skyscrapers are dubai tier dead commercial leases
>>2823654
Canberra is foul by universal agreement, it's the gayest place imaginable. everything seems fake, everything is fake, nothing is good.
Everyone wants to bulldoze or bomb the Victorian architecture because it's unlivable. It's ruins.

>>2828098
>Everyone wants to bulldoze or bomb the Victorian architecture because it's unlivable. It's ruins.
What a stupid statement. You must be Chinese

>>2828012
Architecture is global now. there's no such thing as national architecture anymore (when anybody tries it looks goofy), not for commercial buildings. The west also has buildings designed by Chinese, Japanese and other architects. Zaha Hadid was a famous Iraqi architect who designed many buildings in the West

>>2821952 (OP)
arguably the most boring major city in the world

>>2828916
why?

>>2828446
>zaha hadid designed a building, therefore regional and national architecture doesn't exist
This is so unbelievably retarded that I assume you must be some kind of jeet or paki

>>2829339
>>2828446
He is right. It's like how people think "schools" of economics exist in modern day. The Jin Mao tower was designed by chinese folks though at an international firm founded in the US. It is not the olden days boy. You can take inspiration from OLD architecture that in fact was regional and national but really it is not how you think uneducated twerp.