Festival of urbanism 2025
Beyond borders? Collaborative governance for regenerative regionalism
What happens when one community is split by a state line - but still shares their water supply, hospitals, jobs, services and roads in everyday life? In places like Albury-Wodonga, planning for the future means navigating borders, systems, and politics that weren’t built to work together. From disaster response to housing pressures and workforce shortages, border towns face challenges that don’t stop at state lines and neither should the solutions. This event brings together the NSW and Victorian Cross-Border Commissioners to discuss howcollaborative governance, adaptive planning, and place-based approaches can support more resilient, inclusive and regenerative futures for Australia’s border communities.
Shaping the Nation’s Capital through ‘Regenerative Urbanism’: Aspirational Goal or Realistic Target?
Canberra, the Nation’s Bush Capital, was planned by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, just over 100 years ago as a city in in its landscape. This landscape planning approach provided the context for protecting its environment. However, urbanism pressures have and continue to adversely affect our environment. In an attempt to find ways to address this, we will consider which initiatives help or hinder regenerative capacity the Bush Capital, considering community health and wellbeing; landscape qualities; AI, human rights, ecosystems and the natural environment; and recent major planning changes.
Creative industries walking tour: Sydenham / Marrickville
This special walking tour looks at the thriving cultural industries between the new Sydenham metro station and the Marrickville Library. We’ll examine the transitions between heavy industrial sites to areas of creative production, exhibition, performance, and entertainment, as well as the intersections between long established and emerging residential homes and apartments. There will be an opportunity to visit makers’ studios and potentially to sample some of the specialty coffee, beer, or food being produced in an area declared by Times London to be one of the 10th coolest suburbs in the world.
Live performance, placemaking and the arts; creative industries and precincts for regenerative urbanism
This panel will examine the multifaceted role of live music and the arts in placemaking. Is their value confined to the nighttime economy, or do they offer broader cultural and social benefits? How can cities support vibrant live arts and music scenes while addressing concerns such as alcohol-related harm and antisocial behaviour—issues that originally prompted regulatory interventions like the Lockout Laws?
Join us as we explore how making space for the arts can contribute to more inclusive, dynamic, and regenerative cities and regions.
Land Use Inequality: Melbourne's Ecological Future
Melbourne’s metropolitan footprint stretches over 10,000km² for just over 5 million people, making it one of the least dense major cities in the world. Driven by population growth and a housing crisis, the city continues to expand through low-rise housing and industrial development, despite thousands of empty buildings across its landscape. While cities worldwide explore ecological transitions in urban form, Melbourne persists in using land without ecological or cultural care, or regulations that consider these aspects across scales. This exhibition documents and questions these practices. It restages Land Use Inequality, the work produced by Monash Urban Lab for the 2025 Milan Triennale, representing Australia, as well as showing other research reveals the impacts of land use planning in Melbourne, advancing an ecological lens that advocates for approaches that repair, retain and reuse.
Regenerating and reconnecting recreational and cultural facilities
Renewing recreational facilities strengthens community life by transforming underused sites into inclusive, vibrant public spaces suited to the needs of contemporary urban life. Connecting these facilities to the broader public realm and local ecologies supports social wellbeing. This event will explore regenerative approaches to revitalising ageing and often unviable recreational facilities. Held at the recently closed Maribyrnong Park Bowls and Croquet Club, the session includes presentations of architectural projects that showcase renewed community infrastructure; presentations on strategic approaches to the regeneration of community spaces in the context of ecologies and inclusivity; and a keynote lecture will show how "problematic" or underutilised sites can be transformed into socially vibrant, inclusive places through architecture, curation, education and ongoing operations.
Successful housing strategies for regional Australia: Learning from and for Orange
How can housing in regional cities meet rising demand while incorporating local identity and resolving competing land uses? This panel, marking the Festival of Urbanism’s debut in Orange NSW, explores regenerative approaches to housing that are adaptable, inclusive, and grounded in place. Informed by the latest research on population and housing dynamics in regional Australia, this event brings together national and local perspectives on the housing issues facing Orange and other non-metropolitan cities and towns.
Regenerative Reconstruction: How the Northern Rivers is reimagining recovery
The Northern Rivers has always done things differently. Building on a five-decade legacy of environmental experimentation—dating back to the countercultural Aquarius Festival that put Nimbin on the map—the region is now pioneering three approaches to materials recovery and reuse emerging from the reconstruction effort following the 2022 floods.
Living Lab Northern Rivers, in partnership with Southern Cross University, will showcase three remarkable projects which are delivering benefits for housing and local manufacturing in the region. Learn about the Circular Timber project and its approach to timber reuse and recovery, about a local company 3D-printing entire small homes, and how emergency shelters can be made from bio-based cardboard.
These aren't just local solutions—they represent scalable models for post-crisis reconstruction.
Reclaiming Tomorrow: Artists’ visions for a regenerative future
Artists have the capacity to question dominant narratives, disrupt systems, define new stories, envisage better futures, and reconceptualise our relationship with the world. At a time of poly-crisis this is needed more than ever. In this panel we explore examples of art works and methodologies that offer a reframing of our relationship with the planet and one another. We ask what would happen if artists played a role in co-creating living cities—not relegated to beautification, but essential agents in rethinking how we live, relate, and regenerate, part of a natural, living system?
Connections across time and place: City Art Walk
Led by curator Barbara Flynn with artist Jonathan Jones (Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi) this walking tour engages with important sites of public art and living culture, ranging from the new Quay Quarter Lanes precinct to the city and Woolloomooloo. Highlights include remembering Arabanoo (2022) in the mixed-use development at Quay Quarter Lanes, which responds to the sites’ early colonial history through the experiences of Arabanoo, the first Aboriginal person captured by the colonists. Made with the permission of elders from Gadigal Country, in particular Uncle Charles ‘Chicka’ Madden, the artwork acknowledges the Gadigal people as traditional owners, the continued custodianship of the Eora Aboriginal community and the site’s complex role in early colonial relationships. We also visit The Seeds of Flight (2025), by Argentine-born, Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno, The lightweight artwork above the Gadigal Metrol weaves together the Saraceno’s enduring fascination with fossil fuel-free flight methods with his deep commitment to biodiversity enacted through Aerocene, the non-profit foundation he initiated. As curator of both projects, Barbara provides background to the works, from the formulation of the artists ideas to the delivery of these important art commissions.
Regeneration for the next Generation
Join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion exploring the notion of regenerative urbanism in Australia - through the lens of emerging planners. This special event is co-hosted with the Emerging Planners of the NSW Planning Institute of Australia – a group of passionate and diverse early career professionals who work across the public and private sectors and academia. The event will be followed by a reception and curated regenerative urbanism photography exhibition and award.
Many hands, many actors, many ideas: unpacking Parramatta’s urban design
This session investigates the change of a major urban place over-time and across policy and projects by the hands of many different actors. It examines the revitalisation of the Parramatta City Centre by exploring the challenges, opportunities and sometime surprising creative leaps, that deliver specific projects for major urban change. The four central blocks at the core of Parramatta’s centre are undergoing a significant transformation across a suite of city shaping infrastructure, public space and built form projects. These projects - Parramatta Square, Civic Link, City River Strategy, Parramatta Light Rail and Metro West – intersect within the core to bring together the actions of urban designers working within and for different government agencies and across different delivery pathways.
Regenerative urban design walking tour
Join us on a walk through Parramatta and see how the city is being reimagined for the future.As Sydney’s River City, Parramatta is transforming with major new projects—from the light rail and metro to vibrant cultural venues and new public spaces. This tour invites you to explore the evolving heart of the city, from Parramatta Square to the riverfront via George Street and the future Civic Link. Along the way, expert urban designers and Frankie Layson share their insights into the city's past, present, and exciting future—bringing to life the stories behind the streets, spaces, and new developments shaping Parramatta today.
Debate: That housing “abundance” is the solution
When and how did “abundance” become the latest buzzword and is it really a fix for the housing crisis? Our experts debate the theory that “abundant” housing – especially higher density homes in established areas – is the solution to high prices and rents. We’ll be inviting you to open your minds for this debate where the winning team is decided by the strength of their persuasion in this Intelligence Squared inspired event.
Urban regeneration or regenerative urbanism?
Urban ‘regeneration’ – where disadvantaged or declining neighbourhoods are targeted for intervention and ‘renewal’ – has a checkered history. From the ‘slum clearance’ initiatives of the 20th Century, to contemporary ‘upzoning’ reforms, proponents claim that increasing new housing development within existing urban areas is preferable to ‘greenfield’ development. Yet concerns remain about the environmental impacts and design quality of recent projects as well as wider risks of gentrification and displacement under existing models of market led regeneration. This panel considers recent practice and asks whether a truly “regenerative” model could replenish urban ecosystems, while supporting social capital and housing justice.
Urban Rewilding: Nature - based solutions for resilience and regeneration
The benefits of resilient green and blue spaces in Australia’s cities are well-known, well established, and permeate relevant policy and practice at all levels of government. This session explores the opportunities to build resilience in Sydney’s urban green and blue spaces using nature-based solutions. With inner-Sydney’s Botany Wetlands as a springboard for broader discussion, this session will focus on the different ways nature-based solutions can be applied in urban environments, unearthing ecological value and regenerative potential.
Regenerating civics: urban AI, social media and post-truth
While originally hailed for democratising access to information, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and pervasive social media platforms have increasingly been associated with a fragmentation of public discourse and distrust of ‘mainstream’ political processes. In this panel, prominent thought leaders and academic experts discuss the implications of new technologies for civic engagement and urban life.
Ancient civilizations and Urbanism: Chau Chak Wing Museum Tour
This special guided tour of the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s collection with Deputy Director Dr Paul Donnelly highlights ancient artefacts from the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Middle East. Spanning from the pre-Neolithic to the late medieval period, these artefacts hold intimate stories of people’s everyday lives, cultural activity, and settlements, offering a rich historical record of early urbanisation.
Roads to regenerative urbanism
A recent study from the US estimates that roadways account for 25-35% of urbanised land mass. As (predominantly) public spaces, roads present unique, but oft-forgotten, opportunities in regenerative city agendas.
In the colonised global north, roads are seen as spaces only for cars, enmeshed with multiple degenerative practices and processes including climate change and traffic violence. This perception is often a harsh reality – a human body hit by a vehicle travelling at the default local street speed of 50km/h stands only a 10% chance of survival. Harnessing roads for regeneration, therefore, will inevitably entail challenging the place of the car in our cities as we seek to rebalance the ways we use this forgotten public space.
Taking these assumptions forward, this session asks three experts: how can we reclaim our roads for regeneration?
Regenerative Spaces? Public art and engagement in urban placemaking
A Denis Winston Memorial Lecture, hosted in collaboration with the School of Architecture, Design and Planning.
Featuring acclaimed visual artist, performer and film maker Tina Havelock Stephens, this memorial event considers the special role of public art and its intersections across architecture and urban design in creating inclusive and vibrant places. Tina Havelock Stevens’ recent works include Sonic Luminescence, an ever-evolving large scale sound and light installation located in the underground pedestrian tunnel at the new Metro Martin Place, Sydney (2024) and a 32 channel immersive sound installation for Sydney Football Stadium as part of the permanent Public Art program (2022). We will also hear from Michael Dagostino, Director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum and curator of the Australian Pavilion 2026 Venice Biennale.
Art and urbanism: Museum tour of the Big Power Energy exhibition
Join this special tour of the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s major exhibition of Australian and international art, including works by Joseph Beuys, Mary Gubiyarrawuy and Robert Rauschenberg. Selected by 14 Australian artists (including Lindy Lee, Archie Moore, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Imants Tillers and Ben Quilty) from the University’s Power Collection; works chosen are either physically monumental or conceptually bold.
Regenerative Country, Community, Culture
This panel discussion highlights the regenerative capacity of Country, with reference to leading Aboriginal expertise and enterprise across agriculture, landscape design, waste management, and urban development.
Thriving Cultural Ecologies: Making spaces and systems for creative practice
Creative practices and practitioners are central to restoring and producing healthy social and ecological systems that allow cities to flourish. Yet spaces are being lost, and artists are being marginalised within many of the existing systems. A robust and resilient cultural infrastructure is needed that includes not only equitable spaces to make, share, and live, but also just institutions, supportive policies, broad economic frameworks, networks of care, shared knowledges and access to participation. This panel asks how to enable artists to live, work and take risks in Australia’s major cities, and considers the role of cultural practice in transforming sociopolitical, economic, and environmental systems.
Regenerative creative-led urban development: Danks Street south precinct visit
Danks Street south precinct is an area of Sydney’s inner suburb Waterloo. Bordered by Danks, Young, McEvoy and Bourke Streets, the precinct includes the Sydney Water Pumping Station and Valve House. In a pioneering project, the City of Sydney in 2016 commissioned an arts lead strategy for creative engagement with the surrounding community so that their stories, values and ideas could help shape the design of the public domain. This process, led by MAPA Art and Architecture, led to the ‘Open Field Agency’, which offers artist residencies to support regenerative creative practice. The OFA positions artists not as beautifiers in urban change, but as vital agents in reshaping the systems, structures, and futures of our cities. Join us for a special preview tour of the OFA before its official launch to hear about the origins of the project, learn about the history of the precinct and view the site’s innovative pre-fabricated and self-build structures.