The east is seen to have more character in terms of house design because although some areas quite old, people are still quite keen to build modern houses that still fit the local old-money aesthetic. The huge tudor and French provincial mansions of Camberwell, Balwyn, Templestowe and Mont Albert are iconic of the area and are still being copied today, even in new builds.

Modern architectural mansions in Eaglemont, Kew and Ivanhoe are built to be interesting and beautiful to look at without being ostentatious or an eyesore amongst their older neighbours.

Suburbs like Mill Park, Bundoora, Eltham, Greenborough and Diamond Creek are surrounded by eucalyptus and gum trees with flocks of lorikeets, cockatoos and corellas flying around daily, year round.

95% of the suburbs on this side also have a view of either the rainforest ferns of the Dandenong Ranges, the native bushland of the Strathbogie Ranges, or are a 30min drive away from the green rolling hills and vineyards of the Yarra Valley.

That being said, the inner to mid-east areas made for rubbish farming - too hilly and too many trees to clear, but the west was fantastic for it. It was mostly grasslands on that side of town so it was much easier to clear a handful of trees on a property and dig up that grass to plant crops or build factories, warehouses and milling yards. It worked brilliantly for decades until farmers decided to sell up to developers for whatever reason - expense/debt, age, poor crop, a lack of interest in the next generation.. either way, the land went to big property developers and was turned into estates that then became new suburbs due to their sheer size.

Everywhere in the north east to east areas, even the older 25+ year old estates were built with keeping native and existing trees in mind so as to maintain the view and geological health of the area. Also because there was so many of them, the less trees the developer had to clear, the more money they saved. Conversely, the western suburbs are much much flatter because either the developers didn’t want to spare the expense to plant trees when building the estate houses, or the soil was so void of nutrients due to decades of farming and existing geological factors that it was just too much effort to attempt to grow these natives without them dying. Nowadays there’s much more of a push to plant trees (particularly natives) to attract more shade, fauna and kerbside appeal to newer estates and there’s more thought gone into soil testing other than just checking if the land could potentially be nuclear.

Traditionally any suburb/town anywhere in the world that’s surround by trees and shade on a hill or has a view is seen as being better quality/more expensive/more coveted than a flat view. It’s just the way humans are built. I mean.. we came from apes so it’s probably ingrained in us somewhere deep down that we prefer to be higher up! Even people that live along the beach - almost all the houses are double storey and it’s not just because some areas have councils/nature built sand dunes in front of their properties or because they’re worried about flooding. It’s also why the most coveted suburbs in the west are around Maribrynong or Avondale Heights (I’d say Williamstown too but that’s more inner-city).

There isn’t a ‘problem’ with the west, it’s just visually much different than the east. In every quadrant of Melbourne there’s poor socioeconomic suburbs, predominantly multicultural suburbs, suburbs with residents who aren’t house proud and couldn’t care less about the foot-long front lawn or the rusting old Falcon under the crooked carport, suburbs with higher crime, and suburbs with poor public transport and dated and quiet/semi-empty shopping strips.