City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation
Co Designing Urban Resilience
Cities face increasing frequency, duration and intensity of acute shocks, such as storms, and chronic stresses, such as economic inequality. Multiple and overlapping hazards threaten to disrupt lives, livelihoods and progress towards sustainable development. Shocks and stresses are interdependent, further increasing the complexity of challenges to be addressed. For example, the chronic stress of poverty can exacerbate the impact of the acute shock of extreme heat on vulnerable individuals and families; flooding can cause infrastructure failures through disruption to power, water and transport networks. The complexity of urban hazards mean that they cannot be addressed by any single agency, sector or discipline. Working with stakeholders and communities is an essential part of developing strategies, policies and programs for resilience to complex hazards in cities.
Our work is underpinned by co-design principles and methods. Our purpose is to:
- Co-produce research and innovation outcomes to enhance the resilience of the City of Melbourne
- Contribute world-class, scholarly research on sustainable, resilient and healthy cities
- Demonstrate a constructive, dynamic relationship between the university and the city, as an international model of best practice
Urban resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to adapt, survive and thrive no matter what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks we experience, and to positively transform as a result. The Urban Resilience and Innovation Program in the Melbourne Centre for Cities interrogates the relationships between urban decision-making and resilience, using action research in partnership with the City of Melbourne and key stakeholders. The Urban Resilience Framework for Local Government underpins the Urban Resilience and Innovation Program, highlighting the core qualities of resilient urban systems as: prepared, robust, spare capacity, diverse, reflective, integrated, inclusive, flexible, future-focused, and innovative.
Co-design is based on the principles that an end-user of a particular design has the right to have a voice in the design process. Engaging stakeholders, communities and users in design and delivery of urban systems is essential to improve urban and community resilience. Our co-design approach draws on the Bottom-Up Infrastructure method.
Our Co-designing Urban Resilience work program has two main themes:
- Retrofitting cities for resilience to climate, biodiversity and public health emergencies. Visit the Retrofit Lab for more information.
- Climate justice involving vulnerable communities in decisions about social and technical actions to improve climate resilience.
University of Melbourne Researchers and Staff
Marita Doak
Enzo Lara - Hamilton
Professor Bell’s work connects the urban resilience and innovation activities of both the City and the University, providing scholarship and research that strengthens policy responses and community engagement.
Professor Sarah Bell joined the University in 2021 as the City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation. Prior to this, Sarah worked for 16 years at University College London as Professor of Environmental Engineering with The Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources in University College London (UCL). Professor Bell is a leader in the field of urban water sustainability and is distinguished by her attention to the transdisciplinary nature of the challenge of sustainability. Her scholarly work draws on the social sciences to better understand how people, technologies and nature interact to create urban systems.
She is a Fellow of Engineers Australia. Her PhD in Sustainability and Technology Policy is from Murdoch University and she studied Engineering and Science as an undergraduate at the University of Western Australia.
Scholarly Works
View complete list of scholarly outputs for the City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation via Find an Expert
View here
Podcasts
The City Resilience in Melbourne Podcast explores the City of Melbourne's ability to adapt, survive, and thrive in the face of shocks and stresses, both acute and chronic.
Latest
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Bottom-up Infrastructure
Putting communities at the heart of engineering design and decision-making to create resilient and sustainable environments under conditions of uncertainty
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Urban resilience for local government: Issues Paper
This Issues Paper provides an overview of the concepts, definitions, and qualities of urban resilience to better understand how to address the challenges of the future with the ideas of today.
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Urban resilience for local government: Briefing Paper
Urban resilience has emerged and rapidly developed as a concept to assist cities to respond to acute shocks and chronic stresses. This briefing paper, which accompanies a more detailed Issues Paper, provides an overview of the main concepts, definitions and qualities of resilience.
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Urban Resilience: What's next for Melbourne?
As Melbourne emerges from one of the world's longest lockdowns under COVID-19 restrictions, what have we learnt about the resilience of cities to shocks and stresses? What lessons can we draw for future challenges, such as the task of decarbonising our cities and industries, or coping with the impacts of climate change?
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Rapid retrofit research to help get workers back to the office
The City of Melbourne has unveiled an innovative new project to minimise COVID-19 transmission in office buildings by retrofitting ventilation systems. The pilot research project ‘BREATH’ will trial and evaluate different ventilation systems in a vacant CBD building, in partnership with the University of Melbourne and CBUS Property.
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Launch of The Lancet Global Health Series on Urban Design, Transport and Health
The Lancet Global Health hosted an on-line global webinar to present the series’ findings and a panel discussion
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The Lancet Global Health
Dr Melanie Lowe at the Melbourne Centre for Cities is lead author of the first paper in the series, and co-author on the other four papers.
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Australian Cities Failing on Walkability
The World Heath Organization has set targets to promote physical activity but an international study shows Australian cities are built around cars rather than encouraging walking
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Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities
A global, multi-institutional, transdisciplinary initiative providing evidence-based spatial and urban policy indicators to advocate for and track progress towards healthy and sustainable cities for all.
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City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation Impact Report 2021 - 2022
Professor Sarah Bell commenced as City of Melbourne Chair on 1 February 2021 and is working to connect the urban resilience and innovation activities of both the City and the University. Read the 2021 - 2022 Urban Resilience and Innovation Impact Report here
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Award for Planning Research Excellence, 'Benchmarking Healthy and Sustainable Cities Globally'
Dr Melanie Lowe, along with colleagues at RMIT and ACU, was awarded the Planning Institute of Australia (Victoria) Award for Planning Research Excellence, for the project 'Benchmarking Healthy and Sustainable Cities Globally'
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Circle Distinguished Lecture Series: Co-designing Urban Resilience
This lecture outlines the Bottom-Up Infrastructure co-design method as it was developed through case studies of urban drainage, the water-energy-food nexus and air pollution
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NEW BOOK! Co-Designing Infrastructures: Community collaboration for liveable cities
Co-designing Infrastructures tells the story of a research programme designed to bring the power of engineering and technology into the hands of grassroots community groups, to create bottom-up solutions to global crises.
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PhD Scholarship: Co-Designing Climate Justice
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The Age: These apartments were built just five years ago. Now they’re being demolished
An Age article on The City of Melbourne decision to approve the demolition of the RMIT Village development on the Haymarket roundabout and turn it into a new 19-storey student housing building with build-to-rent apartments.
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Pursuit: Five ways retrofitting cities can help decarbonise our future
New construction is the source of massive amounts of carbon pollution. Retrofitting existing infrastructure is cleaner, and brings multiple benefits.
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The $160m cost of not knocking down this city skyscraper
Sarah Bell, University of Melbourne chair in urban resilience and innovation, said more developers and builders needed to retrofit buildings to address the energy used to construct buildings, known as embodied carbon, and the resources wasted in demolition.
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Retrofit Symposium
The Retrofit Symposium brings together academic, government and industry experts to set the national research agenda to support the transformation of Australian cities.
Stay informed at The Retrofit Forum...
The Retrofit Forum, co hosted by The Retrofit Lab (The University of Melbourne) and the University of Technology Sydney, serves as an open platform to discuss the opportunities and challenges of retrofit in Australia. Held on the first Tuesday of each month beginning in May, this forum brings together industry, government, academia, and the public to share knowledge and stay updated about retrofitting practice and research.
These forums aim to drive the sector forward by fostering a collaborative community dedicated to sharing best practices and insights. Each session will feature presentations by retrofit academics and industry professionals. By facilitating connections, these sessions will address key retrofit challenges and opportunities such as;
- Commercial Buildings: How do we engage with developers, building owners and other stakeholders to make retrofit ‘business as usual’ for commercial entities?
- Housing: The majority of Australian housing is ill-equipped to deal with unfolding climate, health and affordability challenges. What role does retrofit play in improving the existing housing stock in an equitable and sustainable way?
- Landscapes: How does landscape retrofitting contribute to the development of more resilient, low-carbon cities by enhancing various ecosystem services?
- Skills: What steps are necessary to equip the Australian workforce with the skills required for retrofitting?
- Digital: How can digital technology contribute to promoting the retrofit agenda, including the use of technologies like digital twins?
Conducted both in-person and online, with hosts alternating monthly between the University of Melbourne and Sydney- this forum fosters collaboration among industry, government, and academia, and aims to collectively address emerging challenges and solutions within the retrofitting landscape. The Retrofit Forum is organised by The Retrofit Lab, Melbourne Centre for Cities at the University of Melbourne.
If would like any further information on the Forum, please contact: the-retrofit-lab@unimelb.edu.au
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