Melbourne City continues to lead

The most recent initiative is the publication of Future Melbourne, a plan to grow Melbourne as a global city as one of the top ten most liveable and sustainable cities in the world. And if the past performance is anything to go by, it is not a hollow boast.

Future Melbourne is the community of Melbourne’s long-term plan for the future direction of all aspects of city life. It sets out what the community wants for the city.

Sandridge Bridge - celebrating migration to Melbourne

The next step is to determine how this plan will be achieved and who will lead the actions to achieve the goals. Future Melbourne will provide a framework for the institutions and individuals with an interest in the future of the city to coordinate their collective actions toward common goals. For its part, in 2009 the City of Melbourne will be using it to develop its four year Council Plan.

With the theme of ‘A bold, inspirational and sustainable city’, the measure of success will be achieving six goals for making Melbourne: a city for people; a prosperous city; an eco-city; a knowledge city; a creative city; and a connected city. Melbourne is dynamic; and thrives on diversity and innovation, but needs a solid plan for the future because what is done now will determine how well future generations will live. Although the plan may not be fully realised until after 2020, it is focused on laying solid foundations.

Targets

Ten headline targets have been selected as highlights from the many Future Melbourne targets set to help us measure progress towards these goals for the municipality by 2020:

• all visitors and residents feel welcome and safe in the city
• all residents, businesses and visitors have easy to access electronic information
• the municipality is home to at least 140,000 people
• at least 20 per cent of new housing is affordable or social housing
• city employment exceeds 400,000
• per capita greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 have reduced by 35 per cent per resident and 59 per cent per worker from 2006 levels
• per capita drinking water use by 2020 has reduced by 40 per cent per resident and 50 per cent per worker compared to 2000 levels
• Melbourne will be one of the world’s top five university cities
• Melbourne will be in the top 10 most innovative global cities
• at least 90 per cent of people walk, cycle or take public transport to work in the municipality.

Future Melbourne began in early 2007. It is a community plan sponsored by the City of Melbourne and developed collaboratively through ongoing open public conversations. It replaces City Plan 2010. A community Reference Group was invited by the City of Melbourne to champion and guide the development of Future Melbourne and various project partners were invited to participate.

The Future Melbourne plan can be viewed at www.futuremelbourne.com.