Measuring what Matters: A City Portrait for Melbourne
At the time that Regen Melbourne formed - in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, on the heels of the Black Summer bushfires - it felt as though the planet was finally saying, ‘enough is enough.’ With multiple crises compounding, and exposing other, persistent vulnerabilities, it was clear that we needed a new way of defining our aspirations for the city. The shine had worn off of our focus on economic growth as our primary goal - how could we reimagine the city and its potential to thrive?
Through a series of workshops, Regen Melbourne explored Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth’s framework for a new ‘compass’ for the 21st century. The Doughnut reorients us away from economic growth as our primary goal. It acknowledges that we must establish a strong social foundation while respecting the planet’s ecological ceiling, effectively creating a doughnut-shaped ‘safe space for humanity’. We explored what it would mean for the people of Melbourne to thrive, and what it would take for our city to reflect and respect its natural environment. 500 individuals and 50 organisations contributed to the creation of the ‘Melbourne Doughnut’ and a Vision for a Regenerative Melbourne.
Reimagining the future of Melbourne is both exciting and necessary, but what exactly does it mean to be ‘in the doughnut’, in the safe and just space for humanity? How do we measure that? And how far are we from it?
Cities all over the world are asking this question, and many have started to create a ‘City Portrait’ to take an honest look at themselves. The City Portrait is a tool for helping to communicate how a place is performing socially and ecologically. It involves exploring these factors bottom-up, from a local perspective, and top-down, from a global standpoint. Together, these views form the four lenses of a City Portrait.
Regen Melbourne is now developing a City Portrait. The purpose of this is to bring together data and community voice to paint a picture of where greater Melbourne stands in relation to the safe space inside the Doughnut. Where is our social foundation more or less stable? Where are we pushing planetary ecological boundaries? How is work on the ground contributing to positive change, or rubbing up against it?
Over time, our goal is to create a Living City Portrait, a collectively owned platform that can guide policy and decision-making in support of a thriving city. First, though, we will coordinate a collaborative process to help us set targets for what it means to live within the Doughnut, and to identify what to measure to tell us how close or far we are from getting there. Stories of lived experiences across Melbourne will bring the data to life.
The City Portrait process builds on other frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, that also seek to measure and move us towards just, equitable and environmentally responsible futures. Where the City Portrait goes further, though, is that it will place Melbourne in a global context, identifying what we need to do as a city to appropriately contribute to the welfare of people and environment all over the world. It is in this holistic framing that we start to identify the true limits to our habitual, often myopic focus on economic growth.
We invite all who are interested to join us in upcoming conversations, identifying what a thriving Melbourne means to you and diving into what needs to change to get there.
