The Monash Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI) is applying the Transformative Outcomes developed by TIPC researchers to accelerate urban decarbonisation through its Net Zero Precincts project. With more than 70% of the world’s population projected to live in cities by 2050, the initiative takes the precinct as a critical scale for experimenting with, and learning from, urban transitions.
Bringing together transition management and design anthropology, the project co-creates net zero pathways that reflect the lived experiences of communities, businesses, government and knowledge institutes. Through a portfolio of Living Lab experiments, the team is developing and testing frameworks that can be replicated in other contexts worldwide.
As Dr Darren Sharp, Senior Research Fellow at MSDI, explains: “Net Zero Precincts showcases a new inclusive approach to urban transition management that centres the experiences of everyday people to co-create net zero futures. Our place-based approach to transition governance uses interdisciplinary methods, multi-actor collaboration and Living Lab experiments to learn-by-doing and accelerate net zero transitions.”
The Net Zero Precincts project aims to:
- Understand drivers and barriers that shape the precinct community’s experiences, expectations and visions of net zero futures.
- Co-create and envision shared pathways to net zero that reflect the precinct community’s everyday social, political and experiential realities.
- Design and test Living Lab experiments for net zero energy, mobility, buildings, governance and data, aligned with the precinct community’s shared future visions.
- Develop new theoretical and methodological approaches to net zero transitions, introducing design anthropology into sustainability transitions research.
- Create a transferable step-by-step transition framework to guide industry and government in designing and rolling out net zero precincts in Australia and beyond.
As part of the project, the team has published a series of reports that document the stages of the Net Zero Precincts journey. Each report builds on the last, moving from understanding community perspectives to setting shared agendas and activating Living Lab experiments.
- Stage 1: Orienting: Based on more than 50 interviews, this report explores how everyday experiences of people living, working and commuting in the Monash Precinct shape opportunities and challenges for net zero futures. Access the full report here.
- Stage 2: Agenda-setting: Highlights a visioning process that brings together diverse stakeholders to imagine everyday net zero futures for 2030. This stage uniquely incorporates sensory and embodied knowledge, as well as the role of emotions, ensuring that transition pathways are grounded in the real experiences of the community. Access the full report here.
- Stage 3: Activating – Showcases the Living Lab in action, through a portfolio of 10 experiments, using the transformative outcomes approach from TIPC to support monitoring and evaluation, and build capability for place-based transition governance. Access the full report here.
Looking Ahead:
A final report, due early next year, will synthesise insights from across the project and present a transferable framework for other urban environments seeking innovative tools and methods to support inclusive transition governance.