melbourne urban boundary extension a no goer, page-7

There is no need to expand Melbourne any further, it is already massive:

City Pop Area Density
Greater London: 7.5m 1,572km2 4,758/km
Los Angeles: 12.9m 12,562km2 1,029/km
Melbourne: 3.9m 8,806km2 1,566/km

A quote from an article in the age:

'The inevitable conclusion is that Melbourne must grow upward, not outward. Single-storey housing dominates the suburbs. As a result, the population density is less than half that of Paris and a third of London's. Hong Kong packs 20 times as many people into every square kilometre. Obviously, Melburnians do not aspire to that level of urban squeeze, but nor will they or their city benefit from more urban sprawl.'

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/melbourne-needs-to-grow-up-and-end-urban-sprawl-20090503-are4.html

The figures I grabbed are from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles_Area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne

The one about the total area of melbourne I'm not too confident on, it should be closer to 2,500 based on the density but that's wikipedia for you!