While I can't speak to the economics in Melbourne, the slow pace of development in California is purely about economics. To grossly oversimplify things, we have high land costs, high labor costs, depressed property values, high unemployment, and an extremely tight credit market. All of those together make for very slow development. Though it does appear at the moment that we're starting to see some forward momentum, albeit only a little compared to Melbourne. Keep in mind that the vast majority of these projects are proposed or approved, and not yet under construction. So I would wager that even in Melbourne, the tight international credit markets may still play a role in here.
As for the architectural quality, that's a sore subject that's brought up quite often in the Los Angeles threads. It's obvious that Melbourne developers are more daring and creative with their design choices. Many of these proposals have a clearly Australian design language to them (forms within forms, texture derived from outcroppings, splashes of color, etc.), so I'm assuming that many of them are designed by local firms, whether in Melbourne or Sydney. I'd love for some of this creativity to make it's way over to the states. Hopefully some California developers travel to Melbourne to see this work when it's completed.
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"Then each time Fleetwood would be not so much overcome by remorse as bedazzled at having been shown the secret backlands of wealth, and how sooner or later it depended on some act of murder, seldom limited to once."
Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
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