Melbourne community action: Difference between revisions

Melbourne is the capital city of Victoria, Australia. It is widely heralded as a relatively liveable city thanks to its good public transport system (by Australian standands), its relatively clean environment and active cultural life.

The city also has multiple challenges:

• Government plans to extend freeways rather than public transport.
• Water pollution, of creeks and Port Phillip Bay. The Yarra River is heavily loaded with sediment as a result of erosion, owing to the agriculture that has developed since European settlement.
• Urban sprawl, with large areas of the city dependent on cars and spending extended periods in traffic.

Melbourne, like other large cities, has multiple sustainability initiatives going on. Some of these are:

• Melbourne Sustainable Transport Reform
• How Melbourne Is Selling Commercial Property Owners on Green Retrofits, Henry Grabar, The Atlantic Cities.

In 2014, a new deliberative democratic forum, The Future Melbourne Network, was launched to discuss options and solutions to major challenges facing Melbourne, in areas such as housing, transport, and including issues such as climate change.

See also the external links to high-level projects below.

Context

Melbourne has a temperate climate with changeable weather and frequent winds. Suitable urban design for these conditions must include windbreaks and sheltered nooks, for example small parks which catch the sun in the colder months but offer protection from wind.

Urban sprawl is very advanced, but public transport is relatively good, by Australian standards, especially within approximately 10 km of the city centre.

Interwiki

• Wikipedia:Melbourne
• Greenlivingpedia:Category:Melbourne

External links

• VEIL - Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab
• Sustainable Melbourne
• The Melbourne Sustainable Living Festival/Foundation - held annually every February.
• Melbourne pages on Greenlivingpedia
• Collaborative wiki-developed plan for the future of the City of Melbourne (developed 2008-09)
• The Future Melbourne Network - a new deliberative forum launched in 2014 to discuss big issues facing the city in areas like housing and transport, including democratic alternatives to current policies.
• City of Melbourne Open Data portal