There’s value in change: How community is unlocking Melbourne’s regenerative potential
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 Nina Sharpe and Dheepa Jeyapalan, our Regen Streets and Food Systems Leads, explain how community holds the key to unlocking transformative change in this place.
Imagine Melbourne with connected and accessible regenerative streets for everyone. Or Melbourne as the nutritious, equitable and sustainable foodie city we need it to be. A community thriving within The Doughnut. There is so much to be gained for the people of this city if our wildly ambitious projects are realised.
We have some work to do to make these transitions. And that work asks us to draw on new tools and ways of thinking.One such tool is to recentre ‘value’ in how we understand possibilities for the future and to demonstrate the value of what can be unlocked by navigating change.
Tipping the foodie scales: Local vs corporate
As Melbournians, we cherish authentic food experiences: nourishing meals that fuel our bodies, meaningful moments shared around the dinner table, relationships with local market vendors who save us the best seasonal mangoes, daily exchanges with baristas who know our coffee orders by heart, and our connection to the gardens and farms where our food takes root.
Yet the financial reality tells a vastly different story. Our food system operates in a paradoxical realm where elements we find least valuable receive the most financial and political backing. Major corporations producing ultra-processed foods(despite their negative impact on health and environment) generate billions in revenue, while regenerative farmers who nurture both our wellbeing and ecosystems struggle to earn a modest living.
“Looking ahead, Regen Melbourne’s next phase will focus on developing tools that help food sector organisations articulate their full spectrum of impact.”
This imbalance is particularly evident in our retail landscape: corporate supermarkets, with their sterile environments and impersonal aisles, report remarkable profits; while vibrant fresh food markets – the true pillars of small business, local agriculture, and cultural connection – fight to maintain their presence in our communities.
Food should nourish more than our bodies
This misalignment demands our attention. Our recent food system report reveals food's profound potential as a catalyst for change.. It demonstrates that a thoughtfully structured food system could restore our natural environment, create pathways to economic equality, and support First Nations communities' self-determination – nourishing not just our bodies, but our communities, environment, and cultural heritage.
Our October gathering of food system advocates revealed a critical insight: organisations and initiatives are creating value in diverse and interconnected ways, yet they're often constrained by narrow funding categories that limit their perceived impact. Current frameworks force these groups to define themselves through single-purpose labels – food relief, nutrition, or urban agriculture – suggesting their value ends there. However, when we mapped their work comprehensively we discovered they generate far greater impact than their funding acknowledgments suggest.
Looking ahead, Regen Melbourne’s next phase will focus on developing tools that help food sector organisations articulate their full spectrum of impact. This will not only help us recognise the untapped potential already present in our communities, but also spark crucial discussions about how capital flow could better align with our collective values and goals.
The Community Has Spoken: A Vision For Connected Neighbourhoods
The same can be said for our streets. Our work in connecting with communities and inviting them to tell us their vision for their streets – and the pathways to achieving these desired outcomes – has shown us a clear set of values.
Over the last year, we’ve gathered on street verges, busy roads, in abandoned carparks and community spaces, inviting people to tell us their stories of place;what they love about their neighbourhoods and what they imagine their streets can provide in a hopeful future. The people we spoke with expressed gratitude for being given the space to think deeply about their neighbourhood and generously shared their thoughts.
We now have a cherished data set that, when shared with the world, can help communities hold their values tightly, while also supporting decision-makers to better connect with community sentiment.
The data tells us that communities want their voices to be heard, to be guided by good governance, for streets to be safe and healthy, joyful and playful, to have access to shared public spaces, for balanced access to multi-modal transport, for infrastructure and resource capabilities to represent community sentiment, greener and more biodiverse streets, and to share and hear stories of change that can drive the desired transition.
There is work to be done to go deeper on this set of values related to the street. We want to understand the misalignment between what we value and how our decisions and investment flows currently map to this. We also want to help communities determine indicators that will show us that our changing neighbourhoods are aligning with what people value.
We understand that human values and needs are hugely important in transitioning towards regenerative streets and food systems, as a central focus that allows humanity to thrive. By amplifying the latent potential in our neighbourhoods and food systems, as expressed by the people within them, the change we need has a way forward.
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