Introducing Regen Streets, a wildly ambitious project to create healthier and happier neighbourhoods throughout Greater Melbourne
‘Field Notes’ is a weekly column through which Regen Melbourne’s Lead Convenors provide on-the-ground updates and insights from their work and focus areas.
Melbourne might be one of the world’s most ‘liveable’ cities, but this liveability conceals far-reaching social issues and environmental overshoots. Regen Streets Lead Convenor, Nina Sharpe, explains how Regen Melbourne is working towards catalysing a wave of regenerative streets across Greater Melbourne – in service to both people and planet.
Imagine if our streets were designed to meet the needs of pedestrians, bikes, cars and public transport all at once. If our houses and buildings cost next to nothing to heat, remained cool in summer and produced and stored the renewable energy we needed for the community. Imagine if our waste was put to use time and time again and deemed a valuable resource, and water considered so precious that we savour every drop. Imagine if we felt confident that the actions that we take in our own streets and neighbourhoods together as thriving citizens were helping to build the future we need to overcome the climate crisis.
Imagine if things turned out OK.
As we move into 2024, Regen Melbourne is delighted to kick-start the year with the official launch of Regen Streets as one of our wildly ambitious projects.
Greater Melbourne is a rich tapestry of diversity, and the work of Regen Melbourne is in service to this great city we call home. It’s made up of a variety of streets, villages, neighbourhoods, businesses, families and individuals who all work and play in these spaces.
We recognise that community organising and activation has been successfully underway for a long time – in churches, parent associations, sporting groups and goodwill organisations such as Rotary International. The work of groups like these has helped to shape our social fabric and provided us with support and connection. But in these urgent times when we are asked to shape and adapt to this changing world, our organising requires some new ideas and different ways of coming together. In 2023 we experienced the hottest year on record and predictions tell us that 2024 will be even hotter. We can physically feel the impacts of urban heat in our concrete-laden streets. According to the Climate Council, cars are responsible for more than 60% of Australia’s transport emissions but with the way our streets have been designed for cars and not people or active transport, it’s very difficult for us to make the shift (and EVs alone are not the sole solution). What if our streets made it easier for us to make the necessary changes?
Now is the time to ask ourselves the types of questions that can help us change our understanding of how we assemble as a community. How do we live in balance with people and planet? How do we create agency and climate action for individual communities? How do we shift Greater Melbourne into the safe and just space within the Doughnut? Community-led action has a solid track record in being a catalyst for change and we continue to ask these questions, among others, so that we can make an impact. This is the work of Regen Streets.
“The role of Regen Streets is to ensure community-led efforts become a coherent wave of action, influencing the centralising forces in our system and accelerating the transition to more resilient and regenerative streets.”
Over the past couple of years, we have supported three pilot sites to establish strong, community driven work at the neighbourhood scale including Village Zero in Sandringham, Greening Cromwell St. in Collingwood and reimagining Ashley St. in Braybrook. These three projects have seen communities rise up to the challenge and set an ambitious vision for the future of their locality. By the beach in Sandringham, a group of passionate locals have come together to regenerate the village by adopting a holistic approach to community-led regeneration. To date their work has included shifting local food outlets away from single-use plastic to reusable takeaway options, designing plans for a pollinator corridor and advocating for electrification and solar installations.
Moving closer to town in Collingwood, a group of businesses along Cromwell St. were tired of working in a concrete jungle and came together to green their street by planting in gardens, on walls and even in cracks in the concrete. They now gather as a community to water and enjoy the plant life, and are busy designing their next project. And out west in Braybrook, some eager community leaders are exploring how to convert the busy Ashley St. from a bustling, traffic-dense street to a beautiful boulevard. The possibilities are endless.
The role of Regen Streets is to ensure these community-led efforts become a coherent wave of action, influencing the centralising forces in our system and accelerating the transition to more resilient and regenerative streets. To tether these activations into a wave of connected regenerative neighbourhoods which may manifest in a multitude of ways ranging from renewable energy systems to a circular economy, or regenerative, green urban spaces to inspirational public art setting visions for the future.
Throughout 2024 we will embark on a sensemaking exploration of the challenges and opportunities that exist, which will capture the spirit of the current state of play and steer the work that follows.
To organise exactly how we tackle these wildly ambitious projects (or ‘Earthshots’, as we’re calling them) we have adopted a guiding model that has emerged from the many local and global practitioners we have had the privilege of working with to date. The model walks us through four main phases in developing and delivering our earthshots: sensemaking, organising, insights and leverage points (SOIL). While these four phases constantly intersect and build, we'll start by putting emphasis on the sensemaking phase where we will spot patterns by collaborating with stakeholders who share the vision for this most ambitious goal.
We’ll be connecting with stakeholders from all corners of the work to gather insights across a selection of themes, building towards a mid-year design forum. Our initial round of sessions will bring groups together by stakeholder type to gauge an understanding of their experience at the street level. The patterns that emerge from these sessions will help us to design the mid-year design forum to get the most out of the experience.
If you’re flowing with ideas for your street and for the skills and connections you can contribute to neighbourhood-level regeneration across Melbourne - don’t let those ideas go to waste!
Please reach out to me, Nina [nina@regen.melbourne] and be part of the journey.
Subscribe today for fortnightly news and views from the team at Regen Melbourne.
