Towards a Regenerative Melbourne

Regen Melbourne is an emerging network of individuals and organisations exploring a regenerative future for our city. Formed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the network was convened by Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Small Giants Academy, Circular Economy Victoria and the Coalition of Everyone. Regen Melbourne is now made up of more than 700 individuals and more than 40 organisations from across sectors and disciplines. In October 2020, the convening organisations instigated a community engagement project with three clear purposes:

1. To investigate the appropriateness and adaptability of the Doughnut Economics model to Melbourne’s unique context
2. To develop preliminary community insights around a regenerative future for Melbourne
3. To explore the value of a network-based, collaborative methodology to surface findings and recommendations for our road ahead

To achieve the above, we  combined the Doughnut Economics City Portrait methodology and a unique community engagement model. Over the past six months, we convened five interactive community forums, undertook 15 leadership interviews, held six roundtables and conducted countless hours of data analysis.

We are so proud to now release our report that synthesises the learnings from this process: Towards a Regenerative Melbourne. The full report and a highlights report are both now available on our website: www.regen.melbourne

For those who'd like the super short version (!) below is a quick summary of the major insights gained, and the three main outputs of our work so far: a Melbourne Doughnut, a Vision Statement for our city, and a Roadmap for the path ahead. 

Our research and community engagement project made three clear findings:

• The Doughnut Economics methodology, when downscaled and localised to Melbourne’s context, serves as a powerful new compass for our city. The Doughnut model is highly adaptable and creates the space for impactful community-led conversations about our future. The Doughnut model provides the right framework for the right time as Melbourne emerges from our COVID-19 lockdowns.  See Melbourne Doughnut below: 

• Our community insights process has surfaced an emerging vision for a regenerative Melbourne. The Doughnut model and our unique community engagement model developed potent preliminary insights for Greater Melbourne. The major opportunity now is for further municipal and neighbourhood-level localisation, and the inclusion of the global lens of the City Portrait methodology. See co-created vision for Melbourne below:

• The Regen Melbourne network has emerged as an Anchor Collaborative, creating meaningful community connection and activation that can be developed further. This community-led approach to localising the Doughnut model has been marked by the ease and effectiveness of collaboration within the Regen Melbourne network. This has resulted in a co-created shared vision, pathways for continued work and a framework for an aligned way to measure success.

Finally, our work together over the last 6 months has generated a clear roadmap for the Regen Melbourne network. This is shown below, aligned to each of our primary insights. The Regen Melbourne network is now exploring the best ways of activating this Roadmap.