page_title: Box Hill, Victoria
section_title: "Melbourne's second city"
hierarchical_section_title: Box Hill, Victoria / History / "Melbourne's second city"
caption_attribution_description: English: High Rise Buildings with a tram in the foreground, Box Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
context_page_description: Box Hill is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 14 kilometres east of the city's Central Business District. Its local government area is the City of Whitehorse. At the 2016 census, Box Hill had a population of 11,395.
  Founded as a township in the 1850s, Box Hill grew over the following century into a small city with its own CBD, its own municipality in the former City of Box Hill, and its own suburbs, including Box Hill North and Box Hill South. In the 1950s, Box Hill was absorbed into Melbourne as part of the eastward expansion of the metropolis. Today, Box Hill is notable for its large Chinese community, and is home to the city's tallest high-rise buildings outside the CBD. As a result, the suburb has become known as "Melbourne's second city".
  A major transportation hub for Melbourne's eastern suburbs, Box Hill is home to one of the city's busiest train stations, located beneath Box Hill Central. It is also served by the route 109 tram and numerous bus routes.
context_section_description: Post-war housing expansion included a Housing Commission estate in Box Hill South. A district hospital opened in 1956. The shopping area enjoyed growth and prosperity which, ironically, by the end of the 1950s was putting a strain on it; there was not enough space for parking. The development of Myer Eastland and Doncaster Shoppingtown in the late 1960s took trade away, and the shopping centre regained custom by undergrounding the railway line and station and building Box Hill Central on land, which included the old market.
  In 1954, the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works designated Box Hill as one of five district centres for metropolitan Melbourne. The plan has succeeded in Box Hill. In addition to the shopping centre, the Box Hill TAFE and several office buildings have strengthened its centrality in the region. Apart from commercial functions there are large reserves, with ovals in three directions, about a kilometre from Box Hill Central. Box Hill South lies between Canterbury Road and Burwood East, about two kilometres square. Its proximity to trams was better than Box Hill North's and its residential growth was substantially pre- and early post-war. The Box Hill Golf Club is nearby and a linear park continues along Gardiners Creek. There are church educational institutions; Kingswood College (Anglican and then Uniting) and the Christian Brothers' Teachers' College and St. Leo's College (1952 and 1957).
  In 1971, a sister city relationship was forged with Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. "Box Hill" is the name of a department store in Matsudo (ja:ボックスヒル).
  Box Hill City was amalgamated with Nunawading City on 15 December 1994, to form Whitehorse City, renewing the boundaries that began with the Nunawading Parish and subsequent Shire.
  More recently, Box Hill has experienced a construction boom, and is now home to high-rise buildings that are unusually tall for one of Melbourne's middle suburbs. These include the Australian Taxation Office's Box Hill Tower, the Whitehorse Towers and the 36-storey Sky One, which, at 122 metres, is the tallest building in Melbourne beyond the CBD. More high-rises are under construction, including New Chinatown, a $450 million twin tower project which will serve as a modern "sibling" of the historic Chinatown in the CBD. The continued transformation of Box Hill's skyline has seen it be dubbed as "Melbourne's second city".
caption: High-rise buildings with a tram in the foreground
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