Regen Melbourne’s vision for Doughnut-shaped infrastructure
What could Greater Melbourne look like in 2055 if Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria put our heads together? Our Director of Systems Lab ALISON WHITTEN slips on her Doughnut-shaped glasses to submit a formal response to ‘Infrastructure Victoria’s Draft 30-year Strategy’.
Long-term planning is important – not because we can make a plan now and guarantee it’ll be relevant 30 years into the future, but because we need a future vision to guide us and shape pathways for change.
This is especially true for infrastructure – the physical kind – where careful consideration should be given to what gets built, plus why, where and how. Infrastructure planning is inherently tied to city-shaping, especially in Victoria, where big projects are used as a key instrument to shape our urban future, including its regenerative potential.
With this understanding of the importance of good, holistic and integrated infrastructure planning, we were pleased to have the opportunity to respond to ‘Victoria’s Draft 30-year Infrastructure Strategy 2025-2055’, released by Infrastructure Victoria for public review earlier this year. Infrastructure Victoria takes a broad view in defining infrastructure, extending beyond roads and rail to include housing, key public services and green space in its remit. Our response, therefore, focuses on how this relatively holistic view sets up Victoria (and Greater Melbourne as the key population and economic node within it) to move towards the regenerative future we envision for this place.
We see consistency between Regen Melbourne’s future vision for Greater Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria’s overall approach to infrastructure planning and development across the state. Last year, we conducted analysis to compare the City Portrait and Infrastructure Victoria’s ‘Choosing Victoria’s Future’ scenario modelling, published just prior to the City Portrait. While Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria have different remits – and the origins and methodologies of the City Portrait and the scenario modelling differ – we found broad alignment between the preferred future visions described in both projects. This work also highlighted the complementarity of our roles, which are both critical to shaping positive change into the future and stimulating public engagement with the decisions that will impact our city.
Building on this, we commend the updated strategy for its well-considered recommendations for strengthening Victoria’s infrastructure over the next 30 years. The commitment of Infrastructure Victoria to facilitating a healthier, safer and more equitable future for all Victorians is evident in the document. Likewise, Infrastructure Victoria’s dedication to environmental sustainability and resilience to climate change impacts is clear.
However, there are additional areas that Regen Melbourne sees as critical to Melbourne’s future that we encourage Infrastructure Victoria to also consider, particularly around the need to explore new urban governance structures and the important role of community participation in decision-making.
Our submission focuses on three themes that cover ten total recommendations to IV.
Reflections on the strategy’s potential to incorporate holistic systems thinking
We acknowledge that Infrastructure Victoria has taken a broad approach to defining infrastructure and reflecting its importance in facilitating the state’s social, environmental and economic health. To this end, we would not dispute any of the individual recommendations included in the strategy. On its own, each recommendation presents a clear, practical response to a need or challenge that currently exists. However, we see opportunities to improve decision makers’ understanding of the collective impact of the recommendations, reflecting the holistic, systemic nature of city-shaping investments.
We identified four recommendations within this theme:
Prioritise the recommendations within each strategy objective based on more holistic success measures like those articulated in the Greater Melbourne City Portrait, such as reducing social inequality, improving wellbeing and reducing ecological and environmental risk.
Map the relational nature of the strategy’s objectives and provide an overarching recommendation to government about applying an integrated approach to strategy delivery.
Provide a set of examples of what it could look like for the Victorian government to adopt the strategy’s recommendations with a place-based lens in different contexts. (E.g. inner, middle and outer suburbs in Melbourne, regional Victoria settings).
Incorporate holistic social and environmental cost-benefit analysis into delivery and operational costs of recommended actions.
Alignment of the strategy with Regen Melbourne’s Earthshots
We reviewed the strategy in relation to each of Regen Melbourne’s Earthshots, identifying the ways in which waterways, streets and food systems are reflected in the document. This resulted in three “infrastructure layer” recommendations:
Swimmable Birrarung: Consider river catchments as critical infrastructure when planning for adaptive and resilient infrastructure for Victoria. This should include – for each project recommended in the strategy – an initial assessment of potential impacts (positive or negative) on waterways prior to delivery.
15-Minute Cornucopias: While challenging, given the inherently systemic and multi-sectoral nature of food systems, Regen Melbourne strongly recommends that future infrastructure sector plans explicitly include infrastructure necessary to support resilient food systems as a key consideration.
300,000 Streets: Highlight the potential of individual streets and neighbourhoods to play an active role in the planning and delivery of the infrastructure in the strategy. This would maximise the localised impact of the proposed investments, help to create social licence for the strategy and strengthen the agency of community.
Potential opportunities for Infrastructure Victoria and Regen Melbourne collaboration
When it comes to considering how the strategy will be implemented, Infrastructure Victoria’s assumptions about the Victorian Government’s mode of governance differ from Regen Melbourne’s approach to governance. The strategy is designed for implementation via a traditional top-down approach, which is consistent with the nature of state government currently. In contrast, Regen Melbourne’s work is designed to facilitate more distributed and participatory governance models that deeply embed community voice in decision making.
We identified three recommendations for Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria to collaborate – from holistic and participatory approaches to shaping infrastructure delivery:
Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria meet to explore the potential of jointly developed pilots to test and demonstrate participatory governance models in planning and delivery of some recommendations from the strategy.
Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria meet to explore the potential of a joint research project to explore the application of systems thinking and frameworks to future infrastructure planning and strategic design.
Regen Melbourne and Infrastructure Victoria meet to explore the potential of a joint exploration of place-based infrastructure planning and delivery in the context of Regen Melbourne’s Earthshots.
We share Infrastructure Victoria's aspiration for infrastructure development in Victoria to enable people and places to thrive over the long term. Regen Melbourne’s role as an intermediary, designed to activate participatory governance, systems thinking in practice and place-based change, sets us up as a unique potential partner to collaborate and learn with Infrastructure Victoria to help advance this shared aspiration.
Read Regen Melbourne’s full submission to ‘Victoria’s Draft 30-year Infrastructure Strategy’ here.
