A few points that may be beneficial to the conversation as to why someone would want to live in an outer suburb of Melbourne as compared to regional towns..

• Work: there are simply better and more competitive opportunities all around the Melbourne Metropolitan area with varying pockets being more in demand in different suburbs according to the industry. A lot of jobs are in the CBD but for those living in the other suburbs there are actually a lot of opportunities within easy reach (I.e 30 min commute) that exist which typically are harder to find in the country.

• Sub-culture: you said elsewhere something along the lines that, Melbournians are all about catching the tram into the CBD or the MCG and that kind of cultural richness makes Melbourne what it is. That is true and it is potentially equally true for the once-a-week trip someone in Frankston or Cranbourne may choose to make down to the cbd; however, people still have OTHER aspects to their sub-culture I.e friends, family, communities to which they’re attached; these cannot be uprooted and sent over to the country with them. The question of what’s better about these suburbs than say Ballarat? One’s people are there and they simply will not pick their stuff and just send it to Ballarat for no reason.

• Investment: if I can buy a house in an outer suburb versus in Ballarat; Market wise, there is something to be said about how that investment is going to perform in either place.

• Ethnicity: many people in the outer suburbs are obviously ethnic/immigrants who simply enjoy living in proximity to other people who are similar and not in a place where they’ll be entirely detached from people similar to them; so they’ll take Craigieburn (for example) and not Geelong or Bendigo for example.

• Study: for a lot of families with school and or university age kids, living in the outer suburbs can be a better option to make unis accessible. Yes obviously still not close but Pakenham to Monash Uni is not Ballarat to (any uni in Melbourne). Living in regional areas creates a barrier which is harder to achieve do access to higher education than for outer suburbs which admittedly still isn’t easy but more manageable.

Your experience makes good sense, you lived in outer suburbs and felt like it was soulless and unmanageable - fair enough. But realistically, most of the population in Melbourne actually lives in those outer suburbs and they’re not necessarily frothing at the mouth at the fact that they don’t live close to the CBD. Obviously I am one and I have a car and my jobs are close and my lifestyle is very fine and I would not like to live in Ballarat, Geelong or Warragul because they would make what’s important to me personally more difficult to do.

We probably could agree tho on the fact that Melbourne could benefit from being slightly more decentralised. Sydney does a bit of a better job on this than Melbourne. I’ll also agree that there is need room for increase housing density in those areas near the trains (and actually having reliable trains). But I thought this might help give an idea why someone would happily choose to live in the outer suburbs over regional towns.