Launching Melbourne’s City Portrait on Global Doughnut Day
How liveable is Melbourne really? In what ways are our social and environmental challenges interrelated? How might we move beyond GDP and measure our holistic progress as a city?
As Melburnians, we take great pride in the liveability of our city. From Cranbourne to Melton, the Dandenongs to Williamstown, Melbourne has always been, and continues to be, a great place to live.
Yet, while Melbourne consistently ranks as one of the most livable cities in the world, that title conceals an uncomfortable fact: our city is currently living beyond its means. What we have comes at a hidden cost to people globally and the planet – and it’s a price too high to pay. And, the best of our city isn’t equally available to everyone.
On Global Doughnut Day, Regen Melbourne will launch the first City Portrait for Greater Melbourne, based on the ‘Melbourne Doughnut’. The City Portrait is a tool to help places - cities, regions and communities - to explore what it means for them to be ‘in the Doughnut’, in the safe and just space for humanity. Through the City Portrait, we explore our city’s social and environmental strengths and shortcomings through data and stories - to help chart a new path and consider how we measure progress towards a thriving future for our city. Importantly, it provides a holistic way of describing and measuring our aspirations for a city which values collaboration over competition, wellbeing over infinite growth and regeneration over extraction.
Join us for the launch of Australia’s first measurable Doughnut
Alison Whiten, Research Lead at Regen Melbourne, said this represents an Australian-first in measuring wellbeing at the scale of a city.
“The City Portrait is more than just a research project. We have taken the same collaborative approach that we apply to all of Regen Melbourne’s projects, engaging with experts from across academia, industry and government to define outcomes and identify what is most meaningful to measure. We have tested the prototype through a public exhibition in partnership with RMIT University, which has helped us to create a platform that is both engaging and informative. And, this is just the beginning: we are excited to see the City Portrait open up new conversations, actions and further research to support our city to achieve its potential.”
City Portraits around the world center on Doughnut Economics, a framework that proposes an economic mindset that's fit for our times. It's not a blueprint, or a set of policies and institutions, but rather a way of thinking to bring about the regenerative and distributive action that this century calls for. Drawing on insights from diverse schools of thought - including ecological, feminist, institutional, behavioural and complexity economics - the Doughnut helps redefine how our cities can meet the needs of people within the bounds of the planet’s natural resources. In 2020, Amsterdam was the first place to create a City Portrait to downscale the Doughnut and examine how the city is performing socially and ecologically in relation to this framework. Since then, policymakers, economists and activists globally have adopted and localised this approach to their respective settings. Now, it’s our turn.
Amsterdam: the first public presentation of the City Portrait approach to downscaling the global Doughnut
The journey to develop a City Portrait for Greater Melbourne began in 2020, when Regen Melbourne was born out of the dual crises of the COVID-19 lockdowns and Black Summer fires. At that time, the Melbourne Doughnut was developed to reorient our understanding of how our city can meet the needs of people within the bounds of the planet’s natural resources. We released our report, Towards a Regenerative Melbourne, in April 2021 as a roadmap for protecting and enhancing our city, proposing a community vision of a regenerative Melbourne built on the experiences of over 500 Melburnians.
Over the past year, we have embarked on perhaps our most ambitious challenge yet: collectively measuring the progress of our city. We have worked with researchers and practitioners across academia, government and industry to develop a rich and engaging digital platform, the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne, that brings to life a data-based understanding of Melbourne’s current state and its potential. It serves as a compass to navigate us towards a safe and just future, redefining how we assess progress, and points to the types of actions that can balance human and environmental wellbeing. As Alison notes,
“Melbourne’s City Portrait indicates that we need to see significant change to balance human thriving with environmental health. This can feel scary, but we know that it’s possible to achieve big change when we need it. I like to think of the example of smoking on airplanes or in restaurants: it wasn’t that long ago that this was widely allowed, but now it’s unthinkable that anyone would light up on a flight, or in most restaurants. We all know what it feels like to adjust our lives quickly when a crisis hits - we just need to make changes in the ‘good’ times, too. “
For Kaj Lofgren, CEO of Regen Melbourne, the City Portrait points to the types of systemic interventions we need to work collectively towards a resilient and regenerative city.
“Despite the many strengths of our beautiful city, we are facing a web of interconnected social and environmental challenges. These challenges require epic levels of collaboration and new ways of measuring progress. The City Portrait is a great example of the wildly ambitious collaboration we need! We are thrilled to have brought together dozens of researchers and practitioners across many organisations, who have worked together to create a bold and holistic measure of progress for our city.”
Regen Melbourne will be participating in Global Doughnut Day, alongside other more than 30 places such as Beijing, Mexico City, Vermont and Brazil, bringing communities, cities, regions and even whole countries together around Doughnut Economics to learn, make change visible, celebrate, imagine and inspire. A unifying day of local action and global connection, Global Doughnut Day will showcase keynote speakers such as Doughnut Economics author Kate Raworth (who will be joining us virtually at our City Portrait launch event), sessions with members of DEAL, and opportunities for collaboration around the world.
A day of local action and global connection on the inaugural Global Doughnut Day
The time for action is now. Melbourne can be home to thriving people, in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the whole planet.
Join us for the public launch of the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne at the State Library on Global Doughnut Day, Monday 13 November. Limited tickets available and registration is essential.
