Business-led city associations and collaborative economic development organisations are an increasingly important player in urban development, particularly where cities are facing economic decline and are seeking economic and social reinvigoration or transformation. The Committee for Geelong (CfG) in Australia is one such entity, an “independent, member-based organisation committed to leading and influencing to achieve our...

This paper discusses the vulnerability of Melbourne’s food and fuel supply within the interconnected frameworks of complexity and systems theory. This approach starts from the acceptance that this complex adaptive socio-technological system we label ‘Melbourne’ cannot ever be truly reified, as its composite infrastructures and subsystems, often labelled its ecofootprint, exist across an array of...

Quarrying is a noxious industrial activity necessary for the provision of stone and clay, utilised predominately in building activities as the city grows. In post-industrial Melbourne, the extraction of these materials has left a pock-marked landscape, reflecting the fact that the city was settled upon an opportune juncture of sand-and-clay, basalt, and mudstone fields.

The Post War expansion of onshore manufacturing created nationally significant industrial precincts in regional Australia, each surrounded by large swathes of suburban housing to accommodate their blue-collar workforces. However, a shift towards offshore manufacturing over the past decade led to the closure of many Australian manufacturing precincts and the substantial economic decline of many regional...

The contemporary Melbourne landscape is usually defined in a physical sense. The complex cultural landscape, however incorporates not only the physical, but also what’s beneath, on and above the surface, including the sky and the cosmos. These cultural landscapes form essential components of a Wurundjeri person’s identity and connection to ‘Country’, the Traditional Custodians of...