In Footscray, a suburb that has absorbed over a billion dollars in public infrastructure, the streets tell a quieter story: darkened shopfronts, decaying lots, and a bakery owner turned away from a space that had sat empty for two years. Across Melbourne's inner west, a generation of property owners has quietly shifted from landlords who sought income to speculators who prefer stillness — holding land as an asset rather than a place where life might happen. The gap between what it costs to build and what the market will pay has grown wide enough to swallow ambition, and the Property Council no