A year on from the City Portrait launch, Regen Melbourne’s Director of Systems Labs, Alison Whitten, reflects on how our understanding of the platform’s purpose and value has evolved. TL;DR: If last year was all about building a thing, this year was all about learning its usefulness and application.

As traditional economic models deplete the environment and turn communities into competitors, how can we flip the script and make sure our economy serves people and the planet, instead of the other way around? Warwick Smith, the Program Director for Wellbeing Government from the Centre for Policy Development, explains the transformative concept of wellbeing economics, and how we can start applying it in Australia.

Our streets are bursting with the possibility to radically transform how we live and adapt in the face of the many systemic challenges we face. In a new report one year in the making, Regen Streets Lead Convenor Nina Sharpe explores how we can better harness the potential on our doorsteps.

Over three weeks in September, the second-ever Riverfest took place along the banks of the Birrarung River. The event was organised by the Yarra Riverkeeper Association and Regen Melbourne was privileged to play a role in the event’s success. Here, Charity Mosienyane, Lead Convenor for the Swimmable Birrarung project, reflects on an incredible celebration of Melbourne’s life force.

If we want to fix the deeply rooted issues in Melbourne’s strained food system, first we need to make sense of it. How did we get here? What have we come to accept as ‘status quo’? And what’s standing in the way of meaningful collective action? In our latest report, ‘The Foodie City we need to become' our Food Systems Lead Dheepa Jeyapalan explores the challenges and abundant opportunities that lie ahead.

This October, urban design student Tiaré Murphy is hosting ‘Green Spaces in Unusual Places’, a dynamic pop-up climate hub in Melbourne CBD. Developed in partnership with Regen Melbourne and with the support of a City of Melbourne Youth Climate Action grant, the pop-up aims to involve the community in climate conversations and inspire action for a safer, cleaner and greener urban future. We spoke to Tiaré for a behind-the-scenes scoop.

As she continues to explore emerging governance practices in her role as New Urban Governance Lead, Caroline Sanz-Veitch has been spending time in the field, learning from community and cultures close to her (as well as some a little further away). Here, she shares some of the insights she’s started to glean — and the importance of understanding how different people and groups relate to a place. 

How can Greater Melbourne respect the wellbeing of all people? This was the prompt for a series of workshops we held in August to explore the role Melbourne plays – and more importantly, can play – in the global social, political and economic context. Alison Whitten, Regen Melbourne’s Systems Lab Director and facilitator of the workshops, reflects on what came out of them, and what comes next.