I can’t help thinking that the message behind Melbourne’s lanes has somehow been lost in translation.

Melbourne’s lanes were one of the first things about the city I fell in love with.  Hard to put a finger on at first.  I guess it was about getting lost in the Victoria Hotel and Little Collins Street, feeling like a termite honeycombing my way through the gritty bluestone cobbled streets.  Something about the layers of history, urban decay, grafitti and journey of discovery around every corner.  Something about those intimate and sometimes scary car-free spaces, yet they never felt dangerous in the same way as a downtown American city.  Some really innovative architects and intrepid small businesses had taken the plunge to set up shop in some of the most discrete of locations and had gradually helped to unlock Melbourne’s secrets.

Anyway, in 1994 I snapped up a copy of Essential but unplanned: the story of Melbourne’s lanes by Weston Bate and read it cover to cover.  And I discovered a whole new appreciation for Melbourne’s lanes.   The story of Melbourne’s lanes is full of wonder.  I have found magnificent photos of Queens Walk, Chinatown and the Coles Book Arcade, throwbacks to the days before carparks and office towers consumed so much of the downtown heterogeneity.  Like the lanes themselves, the history of them is an equally interesting journey of discovery.

A couple of years later and just about every budding architect in Brisbane was doing theses on Melbourne’s lanes.  The laneways were the latest fashion.  People were buying fashionable warehouse conversions and funky bars were popping up all over the place.  It was the beginning of a transformation for the city.  The lanes were being promoted in tourism ads and Postcode 3000 made the city the place to live.

I also saw the sheer number of intriguing lanes in the city and the potential for them to have life breathed into them like blood through our inner urban capillaries.  Alas it was not the case.  The transformation also marked the beginning of the end.

Melburnians, it seemed, just didn’t get it.  They didn’t understand the reason for the fuss.  Instead they completely missed the essence of what made lanes special and instead sought to commercialise the concept.  And along came QV, Federation Square, GPO, New Quay Docklands and the Melbourne Central redevelopment and a whole lot more new developments which incorporated modern, sterile lanes.  They had cutesy naming competitions, heat lamps, wide promenades, elevated walkways, escalators, smooth polished paving and no bins in sight.  They had designer labels and groovy bars substituted with Big Rooster and Starbucks.  Apartments weren’t conversions anymore, they became monsterous 40 storey Gold Coast style balcony cities with token carpark podiums.  Hell Knox Ozone was putting lanes in the burbs and it seemed cities around the country were implementing laneway strategies of their own.

Suzy Freeman-Greene wrote an article in 2005 about the commercialisation of the laneway concept which has stuck with me for years.  She was so right then and ever since I have cringed at the sight of “new” lanes.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with these new developments and their lanes per se.  What I do have a problem with is the way that it has diluted the meaning of the original spirit of Melbourne’s lanes in a similar way that mock Victorian McMansions are built while some of our most magnificent mansions of yesteryear are left to rot and crumble.

My beef is that in the last decade just a handful of old lanes near Flinders Street have been embraced and even more of our real lanes have, in one way or another, been destroyed.  Look at what Myer and David Jones “urban malls” are doing to Little Bourke Street for instance.  As of 2008 there is no more Eastern Arcade and much of Little Collins is now blue glass.  Many of these lanes have now all but completely lost their character.  Where there once was a SoHo vibe, all that is left is a So-So.  Even the neo-gothic lanes around St Pauls are being repaved, “revamped” and modernised.

Years on and I wander the same lanes to sights of desolation. While the intent was great, the Laneway Art commissions made reference to the neglect and simply reinforced the dead space and further sucked what little life remained in these lanes and arcades.  The hidden lanes remained hidden and unexplored, a potential unrealised.

I can’t help but think that in this overkill Melburnians have lost the meaning of their laneways in a similar way to Christians losing the meaning of Christmas and are simply decorating our once great city with tacky Santas stockings.

While they might shop there, people don’t come to Melbourne to experience Red Cape Lane.  Will they remember it ?  Will it burn into their psyche ?  Not likely.  But a simple visit to Degraves Street, Block Place, Centre Place or Bank Place will change your view of the city forever.

It is time to get over it, forget this laneway fad and move on.  Perhaps then we can recapture the true essence of Melbourne’s laneways and to save what is left while we still can.

6 Responses to “The spirit of Melbourne’s lanes – lost in translation”