Commuters use the escalators from the platform to the concourse at Town Hall station after the opening of Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel rail on Nov. 30.Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
Melbourne and Toronto are similar in many ways.
Both began their modern lives as distant outposts of the British Empire and grew into vibrant, prosperous cities. Both have been enriched by waves of immigration from first Europe, then Asia. Both boast thriving downtowns with thickets of glass towers. Both are national hubs for finance and the arts. And both are home to roughly a fifth of the national population, when their hinterlands are factored in.
They’re practically twins, separated at birth, on opposite sides of the globe. Except that everything in Melbourne is, well, better.
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A Torontonian riding the rails in Melbourne can only hang his head in shame. The city’s network of trams (what Toronto calls streetcars) is one of the biggest in the world, with 1,600 stops and a fleet of nearly 500, big and small. It is run by a private company on contract for the state government. Though three-quarters of the system shares the road with cars, it seems to work much better than the snails on rails that cross downtown Toronto.
Along with the trams, Melbourne has 16 commuter rail lines radiating out from the city centre, most above ground but some under. It just completed a big expansion, Metro Tunnel, with five stations and nine kilometres of track. Like so many transit projects, it cost more and took longer than expected, but the result is quite magnificent.
What a contrast to the debut of Toronto’s Finch West light-rail transit line ‐ slower than a running human – or the non-debut of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Nobody can say when that almost mythical creature will stir to life.
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Melbourne’s parks are spectacular, too. A quarter of the central city is made up of parkland and reserves, a credit to the city fathers of yesteryear. As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it: “These spaces were set aside in the mid-19th-century, at a time when many civic leaders in other cities were concerned with commercial development rather than with the quality of life.”
Britannica must have been thinking of the money-grubbing, penny-pinching leaders of early Toronto, who left it with precisely one big public park (High Park in the west end) and no public gardens that come close to Melbourne’s.
You could spend a week exploring the city’s amazing Royal Botanic Gardens alone. Novak Djokovic, a 10-time winner of the Australian Open, goes there each time he visits to commune with his favourite tree, a Moreton Bay fig. But there are at least a dozen more green spaces worth a visit, from the Treasury Gardens to the sprawling Royal Park.
Serbia's Novak Djokovic with the championship trophy at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne in January, 2019, after his victory against Spain's Rafael Nadal in the men's singles final of the Australian Open tennis tournament.WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images
Looking for culture? Start with the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia’s biggest and most visited museum, home to fine Asian collections and many other glories. Move on to the Melbourne Museum to see its enormous whale skeleton and new gallery devoted to an intact triceratops skeleton.
These spacious, well-organized, well-designed institutions make a visitor from Toronto marvel yet again at the hash that has been made of his city’s equivalents: the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, each the victim of multiple, incoherent renovations.
Unlike Toronto, Melbourne respects and celebrates its history. Exhibits at the Melbourne Museum and the Old Treasury Building document the city’s rise from dusty colonial settlement to the metropolis of more than five million that it is today. Toronto has been talking for years about establishing a full-fledged museum of Toronto history. It even has an obvious place to put it: the now-empty Old City Hall. Nothing happens. Embarrassing.
As for the waterfront, Melburnians can walk along the banks of the Yarra River, have a drink in a floating bar or visit the recently redeveloped St Kilda Pier, with its curving walkway and platform for viewing a colony of criminally cute little penguins (the world’s smallest).
Witnessing all the ways Melbourne bests Toronto, it would be easy to despair. Better to learn instead.
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Melbourne is a great city because its leaders were ambitious. They wanted their home to be more than an antipodean backwater. They wanted it to be a stately, cultured city like the great European capitals they admired. Drawing on the wealth from a gold rush, they built grand churches and imposing government edifices such as the Parliament House of Victoria, the Flinders Street train station, the Royal Exhibition Building and the State Library Victoria, with its light-bathed domed reading room.
Today’s city builders are continuing the mission by digging the Metro Tunnel, restoring the historic Princes Bridge and refurbishing the State Theatre.
The lessons for Toronto are obvious. Treasure your history. Build up your cultural institutions. Invest in better transit. Be far-sighted. Be bold. Be more like Melbourne.