A Swimmable Birrarung by 2030 might be Wildly Ambitious, but look a little further afield and you’ll find plenty of cities that have developed strong urban swimming cultures, despite the (systemic) odds. 

The Swimmable Birrarung is a vast and ambitious project to regenerate our city’s iconic river so it’s not only swimmable, but healthy, clean and teeming with biodiversity. Regen Melbourne CEO, Kaj Lofgren, explains what’s currently standing in the way of this epic vision.

What’s next for the Melbourne Doughnut? Regen Melbourne Research Lead Alison Whitten and CEO Kaj Lofgren explain how our Doughnut will help sustain our regeneration efforts in the years to come. 

The Wildly Ambitious Goal of Regen Streets is to help catalyse a wave of regenerated streets across Greater Melbourne. While it might seem a fairly simple word, understanding how a wave works can actually help us determine Regen Melbourne’s role in this field, writes Lead Convenor Nina Sharpe. 

In November 2023, Regen Melbourne successfully launched the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne. Now, our focus shifts to using the doughnut to inform our work, inspire action, and catalyse change.

As Participatory Melbourne moves into the Organising phase of the SOIL methodology, Lead Convenor Caroline Sanz-Veitch pauses to ask a handful of close colleagues and collaborators how we might reframe (and re-name) the project to better capture the work and ambitions.

Director of Projects Nicole Barling-Luke explains how the different phases of Regen Melbourne’s SOIL methodology add up to systems transformation (or at least, how she thinks they will). 

At the Sustainable Living Festival in late February, Regen Streets Lead Convenor Nina Sharpe was invited on a stroll through Braybrook – and invited to consider what a regenerated Ashley Street precinct could look like with people and nature at the centre.