Major Event: Launching Melbourne’s City Portrait

How liveable is Melbourne really? In what ways are our social and environmental challenges interrelated? How might we move beyond GDP and measure our holistic progress as a city?



Join us to launch Australia’s first data-informed City Portrait. The evening will include engaging discussion and celebration, with a selection of leaders across research, policy and community and joined online by Kate Raworth (author of Doughnut Economics).

While Melbourne consistently ranks as one of the most liveable cities in the world, that title conceals an uncomfortable  fact: our city is currently living beyond its means. How can Melbourne be home to thriving people, in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the whole planet?

The journey to answer this question through a City Portrait for Greater Melbourne started in 2020, when Regen Melbourne was born in the dual crisis of the Black Summer fires and COVID-19 pandemic. At this time, the Melbourne Doughnut was created as a compass, using Doughnut Economics to shape a vision for the city. We released our report, Towards a Regenerative Melbourne, in April 2021 as a roadmap for protecting and enhancing our city. Over the past year, we have embarked on perhaps our most ambitious challenge yet: collectively measuring the progress of our city. 

In an Australian first, the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne will present the social and ecological elements that make up our city’s systems and the relationship among them, exploring how our city is performing in relation to the ‘safe and just’  space of the Melbourne Doughnut. We have led a highly collaborative process, working with dozens of researchers and practitioners across academia, government and industry. From this, a rich and engaging platform has emerged that paints a picture of Melbourne’s current state and its potential.

Our launch coincides with the first ever Global Doughnut Day, a day of distributed, community-led, local festivals celebrating the localisation of the Doughnut around the world. 

The City Portrait is brought to you by our partners, collaborators and hundreds of individuals who participated in its development. 

With special thanks: Design Partner:  Dr Michael Dunbar and Zaib Shaheen, RMIT School of Design

Funding partner:  Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation

Anchor Research Partners:  RM Lab Research Council, Open Corridor, University of Melbourne Centre for Cities, Lokesh Sangarya, Altiorem, Lauren Clark, Gemma Romiti

Communication Partner:  Fireside Agency

Learning Partners:  Altiorem, Arup, Centre for Policy Development, City of Melbourne, ERM, Fireside Agency, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Open Corridor, Think Impact

About Us
Regen Melbourne is an engine for ambitious collaboration in service of our city. We serve as the host and driver of wildly ambitious projects and research toward a regenerative Melbourne. Powered by an alliance of more than 180 organisations, our vision is for a thriving city within planetary boundaries.