Minister Neighbourhoods

While there are very few positives to be drawn from this pandemic, for many of us it has been an opportunity to spend more time with our families, slow down and really begin to appreciate all that our communities have to offer.

Through spending our designated exercise hours in our local streets, shopping for essentials within 5km of our home or grabbing a coffee from the local café, we’ve been forced to experience and reconnect with our local communities and realise the value of local services and amenities.

As I walk around my own neighbourhood, I see people enjoying a coffee at the local café, picking up groceries from the Queen Victoria market or fresh bread from the local bakery. More and more, people are enjoying being able to walk to places that offer the services they need.

We are also spending more time in Melbourne’s open spaces and beautiful parks. I see joggers keeping fit in Royal Park, couples taking a stroll in Edinburgh Gardens, and families having picnics in our green spaces.

These close-to-home experiences represent exactly what the 20-minute neighbourhood principle is based on and designed to create – more neighbourhoods where people live locally and can meet most of their daily needs within 800 metres or within a 20-minute walk from home.

In January 2018 the 20-Minute Neighbourhood Pilot Program was launched at Strathmore, Sunshine West and Croydon South to identify opportunities that would help achieve liveable 20-minute neighbourhoods.

The pilot programs proved such a success that our Government injected a further $360k into the three sites to carry out small infrastructure projects including pop-up parks, streetscape improvements, the extending of footpaths and opening up more space for street trading.

While the projects were all low cost, their benefits to the community were huge and revealed the massive opportunities to be had in delivering new and exciting mixed use, dense, diverse and thriving neighbourhoods into the future.

Together, we have the chance to change the way people live, to bring about cutting edge solutions to the way people interact with their surroundings, and to deliver positive and sustainable change to our neighbourhoods, towns and cities.

Creating a bustling hive of thriving 20-minute neighbourhoods has the ability to deliver huge economic, health and environmental benefits for our city. More people walking to wherever they need to go means reduced congestion on our roads. It means more money in the hands of our local bakers, fruiterers, newsagents and traders and it means less pressure on our health system as more and more people get active, leave their car at home and simply walk to wherever they need to go.

As Melbourne’s suburbs continue to grow, we’re presented with a once in a generation opportunity to change the way we live but we can’t do it alone. We need the architects, the planners, the surveyors, the designers, the lawyers, the engineers and everyone in the industry to share in our vision, and to help us deliver not just better spaces and better cities, but a better future for all.

The 20-minute neighbourhood principle is a world first and a cornerstone of the Government’s Plan Melbourne 2017-2050. It gives us the chance to lay the foundation that the next 30-years will build upon. A foundation that will support jobs, housing, transport, growth and the sense of community and togetherness that our great city represents.

But most of all it’s an opportunity for all of us to create spaces that change the very way people live, and to maintain Melbourne’s status as one of the world’s most liveable cities.

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