The University of Melbourne, in collaboration with not-for-profit design practice OFFICE, has identified underutilised green corridors across Greater Melbourne that have the capacity to be transformed into biodiverse habitats and green public spaces.
Researchers from the University, together with industry colleagues from OFFICE, recently completed Stage One of the Melbourne Biodiversity Networks project, supported by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. The team hopes the research can be used to help address the recommendations outlined in the Parliamentary Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline in Victoria, while enhancing climate, public health and urban planning outcomes.
In addition to boosting biodiversity, co-researcher Professor Dan Hill from the University's Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, said green spaces significantly contribute to climate resilience and human wellbeing.
"These biodiversity networks could simultaneously address three of the largest shared systemic challenges we face: climate, public health, and social justice. Beyond the positive environmental impacts, it is well documented that access to quality green open spaces supports health and wellbeing," Professor Hill said.
"These under-utilised public infrastructure spaces are hiding in plain sight throughout our neighbourhoods, often following ancient waterways. We found that they were located in low-density middle and outer-ring suburbs, which tend to have less access to green space and can be most impacted by the heat island effect."
Director at OFFICE, Steve Mintern, said that the project team identified and mapped existing infrastructure corridors and outlined how creative design interventions can unlock multiple forms of shared value.
"Combined, the biocorridors are eight times the size of the City of Melbourne and if placed end-on-end they would reach from Melbourne to Sydney and halfway back again, giving the project the potential to be one of country's largest urban development initiatives," Mr Mintern said.
Victoria is the most intensively settled and cleared state in Australia, with over 50 per cent of the state's native vegetation cleared since European settlement. Narrm Melbourne was once rich in biodiversity with wetlands, creeks, forests and grasslands – the result of thousands of years of Traditional Custodians' Caring for Country.
The project outlines the opportunity for public sector stakeholders to work together, in partnership with Traditional Custodians, to find new ways of regenerating and cultivating urban native vegetation through large-scale, networked habitat renewal.
Following the Stage One findings, researchers are hoping to secure funding to work with local councils across eight strategic locations to launch prototype biodiversity greening projects that can begin to thread together these wider corridors.
