Before and After: The Coming Change

Melbourne is a fairly residential city and home to many residential buidings as well as commercial buildings. It is now home to the tallest residential building in the world, Eureka Tower. Take that, New York! We live in the heart of the CBD (central business district) on the main street--Swanston street. I have to admit city living is great, if you have a city budget. Our apartment complex is right next to Melbourne Central, -the biggest shopping centre inside the city with 5 levels - across the street from the State Library -where we were photographed to appear on the libary's promotional brochure-, the tram drops you off in front of our building and there is a major train station stop next door on the ground floor of Melbourne Central that takes us straight to our university in the 'burbs of dreary Clayton. Life is so easy and modern here. We will miss it dearly.

The top photo is what our street looks like on any given day, save for when the Commonwealth Games (the Olympics, but for Commonwealth countries like Canada and Sierra Leon) were on. The city turned into New York for a while. The second photo was taken from a website kept by a Municipal Development worker in El Salvador. It depicts her street, her neighbourhood. Whenever I imagine what our new neighbourhood will look like I think of this photo. Whenever I have days where I just want to disappear and go somewhere for a bit, I'll think of Swanston street.