As the year draws to a close and Regen Melbourne celebrates it’s fourth birthday, CEO Kaj Löfgren launches our first ever Annual Report and reflects on a year of progress, big wins, sidesteps, re-shuffles and growth for our team, partners and projects.

From our food systems to our streets, Melbourne has so much potential to become a world-leading regenerative city – one capable of ensuring environmental and economic resilience while allowing our communities to thrive. Here, Regen Melbourne’s Food Systems Lead, Dheepa Jeyapalan, explains how community holds the key to unlocking transformative change in this place.

How can the recommendations from the Greater Melbourne City Portrait begin to influence policy and planning decision-making across the city? Director of Regen Melbourne’s Systems Lab, Alison Whitten, explains how the City Portrait is shifting gears through 2025 and beyond.  

How do we begin to grasp the interconnected pickle we’re in without falling into despair? Is there a way for us to grasp the challenges we’re facing in a manner that moves us towards beauty, and away from apathy? Regen Melbourne’s Yasmina Dkhissi explores all that, and more, through the lens of mosaics.

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.