How can the recommendations from the Greater Melbourne City Portrait begin to influence policy and planning decision-making across the city? Director of Regen Melbourne’s Systems Lab, Alison Whitten, explains how the City Portrait is shifting gears through 2025 and beyond.  

A year on from the City Portrait launch, Regen Melbourne’s Director of Systems Labs, Alison Whitten, reflects on how our understanding of the platform’s purpose and value has evolved. TL;DR: If last year was all about building a thing, this year was all about learning its usefulness and application.

How can Greater Melbourne respect the wellbeing of all people? This was the prompt for a series of workshops we held in August to explore the role Melbourne plays – and more importantly, can play – in the global social, political and economic context. Alison Whitten, Regen Melbourne’s Systems Lab Director and facilitator of the workshops, reflects on what came out of them, and what comes next.

Having recently returned from Bhutan, the country famous for Gross National Happiness, Director of Research Alison Whitten shares her reflections on three key concepts we might apply to Melbourne’s regeneration: sufficiency, spirituality and new approaches to systemic measurement.

Did you know that there are no billboards in Bhutan and nearly every retail business is a small, local enterprise? Recently returned from a trip to the country famous for pioneering Gross National Happiness, Director of Research Alison Whitten shares lessons and insights from the road. 

What’s next for the Melbourne Doughnut? Regen Melbourne Research Lead Alison Whitten and CEO Kaj Lofgren explain how our Doughnut will help sustain our regeneration efforts in the years to come. 

In November 2023, Regen Melbourne successfully launched the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne. Now, our focus shifts to using the doughnut to inform our work, inspire action, and catalyse change.

With the successful launch of the City Portrait for Greater Melbourne at the tail end of 2023, Regen Melbourne’s Research Lead, Alison Whitten, explains how we’re using research to take systemic action in 2024 and beyond.