'Marvellous Melbourne': Making the world's most liveable city

Abstract

5 ‘Marvellous Melbourne’: Making the world’s most liveable city (pp. 113-138) Emma Blomkamp and Jenny M. Lewis During the 1880s, the term ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ was coined to capture a booming city, of which its inhabitants (known as Melburnians) were extremely proud.¹ With about half a million people, it was larger than many European cities at the time, despite its location on the other side of the world, in the south-east of Australia. Money was poured into building lavishly decorated banks, hotels and coffee palaces (temperance hotels that refused to serve alcohol). The Royal Exhibition Building was built for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. This was—and happily remains—a b..