IN JANUARY 2016 in the holiday atmosphere that envelops Melbourne – remember the Australian Open and Australia Day long weekend? – thoughts about the city’s future seem remote and unimportant. After all isn’t Melbourne ‘the world’s most liveable city’? What is there to discuss? Yet the two front-page articles of the Age on 18 January capture the contrasting realities. There is ninety-two-year-old Henry Young ready to take to the grass courts of Shepparton in the national senior’s tennis tournament, alongside a report that Victoria will require two hundred and twenty new schools over the next decade, with none scheduled to open in 2016. It is tempting to simply turn the page, but both reports point to future liveability in a city with a rapidly growing and ageing population.

Schools are one of many future infrastructure needs. The reality is we can no longer keep up with the traditional infrastructure requirements. Rapid population growth and a business-as-usual approach is putting pressure on diminishing resources; this is clear. While the indicators are visible in both the rural and urban settings, it is the urban settings where the overwhelming majority live and where many of the solutions will need to be implemented.