The shortlist

The coolest neighborhoods in Melbourne.

This site exists to give one answer per city, and for Melbourne that answer is Fitzroy. But Melbourne's north side is stacked, and three other neighborhoods pushed the decision harder than most cities manage with ten. Here is the shortlist, ranked, with the reasoning out in the open.

01

Fitzroy The pick

Fitzroy won because it does everything the runners-up do one at a time, all at once. Collingwood has the late nights, Brunswick has the politics and the music, North Melbourne has the new-opening heat. Fitzroy has two full strips running in parallel, and neither one carries the other. You can drink at Bar Liberty, eat at Cutler, buy a shirt at Handsom, and still get a proper flat white at Spectrum before noon, all inside a fifteen minute walk. Fitzroy's edge is durability. Fitzroy already went through the cycle the others are mid-way through, and it came out the other side still interesting. That almost never happens.

Read the full case for Fitzroy →
02

Collingwood

Smith Street is the rawest strip on this list and arguably the most alive right now. Zareh and Suze are the kind of openings other cities would build a whole marketing campaign around, Collingwood Yards is doing actual work keeping artists in the postcode, and the Grace Darling still books bands. The problem is velocity. Smithward closed after eight years so a landlord could build offices, and Red Sparrow left the street after nearly nine. Collingwood is moving faster than Fitzroy ever did, and not all of it is moving in a good direction.

03

Brunswick

Sydney Road is not curated and that is the entire appeal. Turkish bakeries, punk rooms, charity shops, the Retreat, Howler, the Brunswick Ballroom, all shoulder to shoulder. The music festival has run for 38 years and shuts down the whole street once a year, which is a civic muscle Fitzroy simply does not have. Add the queer dance parties and the fact this is the only Greens seat in Victoria, and Brunswick is the most genuinely itself neighborhood in Melbourne. It lost points on food ambition, not on character.

04

North Melbourne

The corner of Errol and Victoria is the hottest intersection in Melbourne, and almost nobody outside the neighborhood knows it. Manzé did four years of Mauritian cooking in 24 seats, then opened Boire across the road. Bar Taralli, Pour Diane, and now Pebble all landed in the same two-block radius within a year or so. Only 40 percent of residents were born in Australia, and the food depth shows it. This is Fitzroy about a decade ago. Give it five years and this ranking may need editing.

No juries, no sponsors. How we pick explains the rules; Fitzroy is where they landed.

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