LONG TERM COMMUNITY PLANNING
FUTURE MELBOURNE 2026
Project snapshot
In 2016, a citizens’ jury of 50 everyday Victorians was asked to answer the question: ‘How should the Future Melbourne vision, goals and priorities be refreshed to prepare our city for the next decade?’.
The jury was appointed to review and rewrite the City of Melbourne’s Future Melbourne plan to make it relevant for the next 10 years to 2026.
The jury asked to deliberate over a matter of public significance - a long term, strategic plan for a large, complex city that would guide the Council over the next decade. This significant task included ensuring that the plan represented the needs and aspirations of a diverse community.
VIDEO: The Future Melbourne 2026 citizens’ jury (City of Melbourne)
The process
Broad engagement was undertaken before the citizens’ jury commenced deliberations. Over two months in early 2016, several thousand people and a number of organisations shared and debated their ideas for the city’s future. Ideas were then collated into a report for the jury’s consideration.
The jury was comprised of a randomly selected and demographically balanced panel of citizens that deliberated online for more than three weeks, and met in person for three and a half day-long sessions.
MosaicLab designed the sessions to ensure that the citizens involved were given the opportunity to reach informed conclusions based on a range of inputs including evidence from expert witnesses.
IMAGE: Jurors participating in the Future Melbourne Process (City of Melbourne)
Outcomes
The Future Melbourne 2026 Citizens’ Jury agreed on 9 Goals and 54 Priorities and in August 2016 the Future Melbourne Ambassadors (six leaders from the Melbourne community) commended Future Melbourne 2026 to Council.
View the final plan on Future Melbourne 2026. You can also read the resolution (or listen to the audio) of the meeting on the Future Melbourne Committee 2 August 2016 page.
IMAGE: Jurors participating in the Future Melbourne Process (Source: City of Melbourne)
““The people who visit here the people who work here, the people who live here, they can look at this plan and then go ‘yeah I can buy into that’ and that’s a future I want to get involved in””
IMAGE: Jurors participating in the Future Melbourne Process (City of Melbourne)
““It’s an understandable process, it’s slightly messy but democracy is slighty messy” ”
