Swim City: Mapping and researching urban swimming

Join us for the official launch of Swim Melbourne, an online storymap of places to swim and a panel discussion on swimming research.

Urban swimming is an activity growing in significance and popularity, with people enthusiastically plunging into rivers, oceans and pools all around their cities. As well as exercise, swimming places offer refuge from the heat, connection with community, and space for play and rest. Indoor and outdoor pools, rivers, and beaches each offer different pleasures and risks, all of which are part of the decisions we make about where to swim and what to pay attention to when we are in the water. This map aims to help swimmers make informed decisions about their option of places to swim, as well as share information about risks and safety. Finally, it also offers swimming stories of Melbourne, to share the diversity of what swimming is like in this city.

The launch will be followed by a panel of social science researchers whose work explores topics including waterways, rivers, swimming, and community connection. We will explore the richness of social science approaches for how we learn about watery places and practices, and for making sense of what it means to swim. The speaker list will be updated as speakers are confirmed.

Speakers include:

Dr Rebecca Olive is a Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, where she also leads the theme, Regenerative Environments and Climate Actin. Her work includes a focus on recreational, nature-based sport and leisure, and how activities like swimming shape our relationships to ecologies and communities, including in cities.

Dr Nícolas Guerra-Tão is a transdisciplinary researcher dedicated to exploring how the complex dynamics of urban spaces can support social diversity, coexistence, and transformative change. He uses tools including mapping to reveal how planning and policy impact these socio-spatial relations and how these invisible interactions in public spaces influence people’s perceptions and experiences of urban life.

Dr Maya Costa-Pinto is an anthropologist and cultural geographer with research interests encompassing urban ecologies, legal anthropology and environmental humanities. Her research explores how diverse constituencies engage in urban regeneration initiatives that seek to integrate waterways with the built environment in rapidly urbanising cities and towns.

Lian Low (she/they) writes across genres. Learning to swim as an adult led them to teach swimming and complete honours research on aquatic literacy in Asian Australian communities. Their essay 'Adult Swimmer' was featured in Kill Your Darlings and the Reading the City of Literature snapshot of Melbourne’s literary activity in 2024. Previously, they edited Peril and were a 2018 Wheeler Centre Next Chapter recipient. 

Dr Liz Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Monash University. Often using spatial and historical perspectives, her research develops understanding of long-term urban change and the role of policy settings in it. She is the author of “Dry Zones”, and co-host of podcast "This Must Be The Place". She is currently researching public swimming pools as community spaces in Australia.

Dr Alexandre Faustino (he/him) is a Research Fellow at RMIT University and member of the Alliance for Praxis Research (APR). His research investigates how waterscapes, the ways humans and more-than-humans relate with water, can be re-imagined, lived and governed with socio-ecological justice, with a focus on grassroots and activist perspectives.

The event is part of RMIT University's program for Social Sciences Week (presented by the Academy of the Social Sciences) and is supported by RMIT's Centre for Urban Research and the School of Global, Urban & Social Studies. The event is also part of Yarra Riverkeeper Association’s 2025 Birrarung Riverfest. Celebrate our river at one of 60+ events hosted over three weeks from 6–28 September. Whether you enjoy riverside walks, cleanups, creative workshops or paddling adventures, there's something for everyone at Riverfest. Riverfest is presented by the Yarra Riverkeeper Association and our partners Burndap Birrarung burndap umarkoo collaboration and Melbourne Water. Check out the full Riverfest program here.