Map of the Month pilot program

Challenges across greater Melbourne are diverse and pressing, but rarely tackled in their metropolitan dimension. Yet for the most part our policy and research are splintered across siloes and geographical specificities.

Leveraging the launch of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation’s NFP Impact Hub, and the Foundation’s comprehensive portfolio of impact areas, the Map of the Month project tackled this fragmentation challenge through a program of place-based knowledge activation to spur a “metropolitan conversation” in and about Greater Melbourne’s pressing challenges.

The Melbourne Centre for Cities delivered a pilot Map of the Month approach to knowledge activation that, centred on the delivery of a monthly ‘map’ of greater Melbourne, to offer both effective science communication of pressing areas for Melbourne’s long-term resilience, as well as convene key stakeholder discussions about how this plays out across Melbourne.

The project built on existing models overseas, and especially on the lessons of the UN’s Global Urban Observatory program and the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s Map of the Month initiative, as well as on background scoping work already delivered by the Centre with LMCF and UN-Habitat between 2018 and 2021.

Melbourne’s Map of the Month catalysed attention to not only issues but ongoing interventions, and profile experts at the heart of science-policy conversations with real impact on our metropolitan region.