Are Melbourne’s suburbs full of quarter acre blocks?

A lot has been said about the great Australian dream of moving to the suburbs and living on a quarter acre block. But is Melbourne suburbia actually full of quarter acre blocks? Where are they to be found? Are they disappearing? This post delves into block sizes in Melbourne.

Where are the quarter acre blocks?

A quarter-acre translates to 1011.7 square metres in modern units, but for the purposes of this post I’ll allow some leeway and count any block between 900 and 1100 square metres. For this post I’ve also filtered out blocks in planning zones that cannot include dwellings (eg industrial areas), but that does mean I’ve included blocks in mixed use zones, commercial zones, etc. So not every block counted is residential. Also some larger blocks might contain multiple small dwellings but not actually be subdivided (eg a block of flats).

First up, here is a map of Melbourne showing the prevalence of quarter acre blocks. It looks like there are lots of them, but because the blocks are so small, the total area occupied by quarter-acre blocks is significantly over-represented on this large scale map.

There are larger concentrations in the outer north-east and outer-east, but very few blocks in the current growth areas to the west, north and south-east.

Here are the top 20 suburbs for numbers of quarter-acre blocks:

There are almost 78,000 quarter-acre blocks within Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary, which sounds like a lot, but is only 3.75% of the 1.8 million blocks in my dataset.

So what are typical block sizes in Melbourne?

For this analysis I’m considering blocks within land use zones that can include dwellings, that are also within the urban growth boundary. But I’ve excluded blocks of less than 40 square metres on the assumption these are unlikely to contain dwellings.

Here’s the frequency distribution of block sizes in Melbourne:

The most common block size is 640-660 square metres, and 34.5% of blocks are between 520 and 740 square metres. The median is 540-560 square metres. 180-200 is the most common smaller block size, and there is a small spike in block sizes of 1000-1020 square metres, which includes the quarter-acre block. But quarter-acre blocks are certainly very uncommon.

I’ve calculated the median block sizes for all suburbs within Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary.

The inner city has median block sizes under 300 square metres, and 300-500 is typical in the inner northern and western suburbs. Block sizes are larger in the middle and outer eastern suburbs, older suburbs in the south-east, and blocks along the Mornington Peninsula. But the more recent growth areas to the west, north and south-east see median block sizes of between 400 and 500 square metres (purple), reflecting higher dwelling densities encouraged by current planning policy for growth areas. Quarter-acre blocks are the median only in places like Upwey, Belgrave and Portsea.

Inner city Carlton has the lowest median of 100-120 square metres, followed by Cremorne, North Melbourne, South Melbourne at 120-140 square metres, and then Abbotsford, Fitzroy North, Port Melbourne, Richmond, West Melbourne at 140-160 square metres. Urbanised suburbs at the other end of the scale include Park Orchards at 3020, Selby at 1440, and Warrandyte at 1260.

There are two interesting outliers in the central city: Southbank (in yellow) has a median block size of 980 square metres, and Docklands (in blue) has a median of 660 square metres. Both have been redeveloped in recent decades with many medium to high-rise apartment towers on those larger blocks.

Beyond these medians, there is a lot of variation within suburbs. Let’s go for a wander around the city.

Mooroolbark has the highest count of quarter-acre blocks and a median size of 840 square metres. As well as larger blocks, you can see a lot of further subdivision, particularly close to the train line (thin black line).

You may have noticed in the suburb map above a black coloured suburb in the middle south-eastern suburbs. That suburb is Clayton, and here is how it looks:

While blocks of 700-800 square metres were probably typical in the original subdivision, further subdivided blocks now outnumber the larger blocks, with a median of 260 square metres. Clayton of course is home to a major Monash University campus, and I suspect a lot of the smaller blocks house students.

A bit further down the line in Noble Park you can see extensive further subdivision near the rail line, surrounded by almost uniform blocks of 500-600 square metres:

Heading further south, Cranbourne is an interesting mix. The inner core (old town) has larger blocks but lots of further subdivision. This is surrounded by many blocks of around 700-800 square metres, but the most recent development has much smaller bocks, most less than 500. It’s a bit like tree rings, with each ring of incremental urban growth reflecting the preferred new block size of the time.

The area around Berwick also has a wide variety of block sizes, depending on the timing of development:

Here is the Frankston area:

Again significant further subdivision in central Frankston, a variety of block sizes in different parts of Langwarrin, and lots of large blocks in Frankston South and Mount Eliza (in some of the pink areas most blocks are over 2500 square metres).

In the middle northern suburbs you can see suburbs from an era when new block sizes were relatively large, and they’ve since had extensive subdivision. Here is Pascoe Vale:

Here is Reservoir. You can see smaller blocks in the surrounding suburbs:

The large block area to the west of the train line was apparently developed around the 1960s.

And to the west St Albans is another suburb with larger blocks being subdivided:

And further east there is a lot of further subdivision in Boronia and Bayswater, particularly near the rail stations:

The north-west corner of Templestowe has not too many larger blocks yet to be subdivided. But to the south-east you can see areas with blocks larger than 1200 square metres (light pink).

The area around Eltham has many large blocks, including many larger than quarter-acres. There has been quite a bit of subdivision around the rail stations however.

Another area with many large blocks is around Upwey/Belgrave:

A significant proportion of blocks are larger than a quarter-acre, with a median of 1060 in Belgrave, 1120 in Upwey, 1000 in Tecoma, and 980 in Upper Ferntree Gully.

If you want a quarter-acre block relatively close to the city, then Balwyn North has quite a few (many with swimming pools). Good luck saving a deposit for those.

But if a quarter-acre block isn’t big enough and you can afford the real estate, then you might want to try Canterbury or Deepdene, also relatively close to the city:

Or of course Toorak with plenty of very large blocks even closer to the city (although many will contain apartment buildings).

Essendon also has some larger blocks, including some quarter-acres:

There has been plenty of further subdivision, but there is also a stripe of green that is mostly in tact (a restrictive covenant applied perhaps?). You can also see the recent Valley Lake development in purple in Niddrie.

Most of the growth areas have small blocks, but here are some exceptions in eastern Doreen:

So there is plenty of variation in block sizes across Melbourne, but not that many quarter-acre blocks. Perhaps we should talk more about the one-seventh-acre block.

Data acknowledgement

This analysis was made possible with data available from data.vic.gov.au under a creative commons license. The data is Copyright © The State of Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning 2016.

I have used November 2015 property boundary data and May 2016 planning zones (sorry, not quite aligned, but this post has been a while in the making and the differences are unlikely to be significant).