Regen Melbourne acknowledges and respects the Bunurong, Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, which is now known as Melbourne. We extend these acknowledgements to all Traditional Owners across the State of Victoria. The knowledge, practices and deep wisdom of the First Nations people of this land guides, informs and drives our work.
Welcome Back to 300,000 Streets Library
Thank you for joining us again on this journey of urban transformation. In this edition, we're diving deep into the intersection of democracy, participation, and street-level change.
From podcasts exploring how to heal democracy, to hands-on experiences that turn our waterways and streets into spaces for reflection, this collection celebrates the power of ordinary citizens to reshape their communities from the ground up.
This month, we're particularly excited to spotlight conversations about citizen engagement, the art of collective imagination, and practical approaches to retrofitting our streets. Whether through creative walking practices, urban role-playing games, or academic forums, we're seeing how streets can become labs for democratic participation and community agency.
As always, we connect you to the tools and stories that champion streets as the heartbeat of a more sustainable and connected Greater Melbourne. Let's explore together how small actions at street level can catalyse the bigger changes our cities need. 🌿🚶♀️🚴
3 Things to Read
1. Building Community Walkability for Heart Health
📄 Community Walkability – Heart Foundation
🚶 Why it matters: This comprehensive resource explores how neighbourhood design directly impacts physical activity, heart health, and community connection. With tools to assess and advocate for better walkability, it's essential reading for anyone working to create more liveable streets.
✨ Highlight: People in walkable neighbourhoods are 1.5 times more likely to achieve sufficient physical activity levels and 2.8 times more likely to have healthy cardiovascular profiles.
2. Restoring Social Life Through Sidewalk Design
📄 Sidewalk Resource Guide – Social Life Project
🏛️ Why it matters: This extensive guide reveals how sidewalks (or as we say in Australia, footpaths) can be transformed from car-focused passages into vibrant platforms for social and commercial life. It offers practical strategies for creating sidewalks that prioritise people over vehicles.
✨ Highlight: Shifting focus from street traffic to sidewalk social life can address the loneliness epidemic while strengthening local economies and community resilience.
3. Evidence for Neighbourhood-Based Investment
📄 Everybody Needs Good Neighbourhoods – Shared Intelligence
🗣️ Why it matters: This research provides compelling evidence that neighbourhood-based initiatives deliver measurable outcomes: 41% faster business growth, reduced child poverty, and greater crime reduction compared to areas without neighbourhood programs.
✨ Highlight: Long-term neighbourhood interventions that foster community development show statistically significant positive impacts across economic, social, and safety indicators.
3 Things to Hear
1. How to Save Democracy
🌍 Why it matters: A new podcast that aims to heal society's broken relationship with democracy, holding tough conversations about transforming democratic participation.
✨ Highlight:Democracy is like a dysfunctional relationship that needs honest conversation and collective work to rebuild trust and engagement.
2. The Imperfect Citizens
🚸 Why it matters: A fresh podcast exploring how imperfect citizens can still create meaningful change in their communities and democratic systems.
✨ Highlight: Embracing our imperfections as citizens while still taking action to strengthen democracy and community agency.
3. Can Citizen Juries Put the People Back in Democracy?
🌟 Why it matters: Exploring how citizen juries can transform democratic decision-making by bringing everyday people into structured deliberation on complex policy issues.
✨ Highlight: Small groups of citizens can make informed decisions that reflect community wisdom when given time and information to deliberate.
3 Things to Do
1. 🌱 Street Wisdom Walkshop
📅 Date: Saturday 20th September, 2025, 11.00 AM - 1.00 PM (Part of Birrarung Riverfest 6-28 September)
📍 Location: Along the Birrarung, Melbourne 🔗 More Info:Humanitix
📝 Description: A free creative walking practice that transforms a wander along the Birrarung into an extraordinary experience where you can work out what matters to you and take active steps forward. This guided walkshop demonstrates how streets and waterways can become spaces for personal reflection and community connection.
2. 🎵 Retrofit Forum: Retrofitting Streets
📅 Date: Tuesday July 29th, 2025, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM AEDT
📍 Location: University of Melbourne, Glyn Davis Building (also available online) 🔗 More Info: Eventbrite
📝 Description: Join Nina Sharpe from Regen Melbourne and Dr Kylie Soanes from Melbourne Centre for Cities to explore how streets can be retrofitted for climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health. This forum brings together industry, government, and academia to drive sustainable urban transformation.
3. 🎨 Reworlding Naarm
📅 Date: Friday July 25th, 2025, 1.30 PM - 4.00 PM
📍 Location: Streets of Naarm Melbourne, meeting at narrm ngarggu library 🔗 More Info: Humanitix
📝 Description: Join an urban role-playing game set on the streets of Naarm Melbourne in 2050. Led by artist and academic Troy Innocent, this 2.5-hour journey through the inner-city invites participants to work together imagining futures while actively engaging with street-level spaces as platforms for collective creativity and vision-making.
🌟 Streetlight on Place
In each edition, we'll shine our streetlight on one place across Greater Melbourne that shows us what's possible when local people step up as citizens and design a better way.
This time, we turn our attention to Merri-Bek's Ride and Stride program, where an award-winning initiative is transforming how children experience their local streets while building community agency around sustainable transport.
The Ride and Stride program recognises that "our streets belong to everyone who walks, rides, plays and drives" and works directly with schools to tackle specific barriers to active travel in their neighbourhoods. Through innovative approaches like Open Streets (temporarily closing streets to car traffic during school drop-off), Bike Buses (groups of families riding to school together on set routes), and Dr Cranky's bike recycling program, they're creating tailored solutions that emerge from community needs.
What makes this program extraordinary is how it combines practical infrastructure changes with behaviour change and community building. The Tag On system lets kids earn points for active travel while giving parents peace of mind, while programs like Biketober turn sustainable transport into celebration and friendly competition between schools.
Merri-Bek's Ride and Stride reminds us that transforming streets isn't just about infrastructure, it's about creating systems that support families to reclaim their neighbourhoods as spaces for children to move freely, safely, and joyfully. By 2030, they're aiming for 80% of school trips to be made via sustainable transport, proving that street-level change can scale when communities are empowered to lead. 🌱✨
🚶 Got an idea, story, or initiative that reshapes how we think about streets, community, or regeneration?
We'd love to hear it! Whether it's a local project, cutting-edge research, or a spark of inspiration, share it with us to feature in our next edition. Let's amplify your vision together! 🌟
Send us an ✉️ at nina@regen.melbourne