There's a lovely little free exhibition on at the City Gallery in Melbourne Town Hall at the moment, called "A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne". It runs until 12 August 2016 and features stories and images of ideas for development in and around the Melbourne CBD over the years.

There are proposals for elevated pedestrian walkways, canals, bizarre building designs, underground trams, pyramids and autogiro buses. There is also information about some design proposals that actually did go ahead, such as the underground train line and housing commission blocks.

A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne

The artwork running around the upper wall is by Lewis Brownlie. It's an imagined cityscape of Melbourne that incorporates the proposed developments featured in the exhibition. There's a short YouTube video that shows the artwork in progress.



The City of Melbourne website lists the exhibition location and opening times, and also provides a contextual description of some of the exhibition content. If you can't get to the exhibition while it's running, The Age has a slideshow of some of the most interesting proposals. Lewis Brownlie's artwork is included too.