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It was a pleasure to attend the Living Cities Forum on Tuesday. The line-up of speakers was considered and inspiring in equal measure. This year's theme was ‘Cities made with Care’. It might just as well have been called ‘Homes Made with Care,’ as housing dominated nearly every session, a timely focus given where the housing conversation is right now. However, this phrase gave us pause. Because shouldn't care be the baseline? Dan Hill (Melbourne School of Design) and Shannon

The public market has been the cornerstone of our civilisations for over 5,000 years, a place for meeting, gathering and trade. Over the past 35 years, Village Well has worked with some of Australia's great markets and created visions for some of the world's best, giving us a unique perspective on what makes these places thrive. Some of Australia's great markets have been trading for more than 150 years. During that time, almost everything around them has changed, how we sho

Our Flourishing Cultures and Communities Pillar is about the togetherness of people in place. It asks: How do the systems, management, and governance of our places shape the way we interact, connect, and build community? For communities to thrive, our places need to foster a genuine sense of belonging, where inclusion and acceptance are embedded in everyday life. Flourishing places create opportunities for people to come together, regardless of background, to connect around w

Insights from a walker Words by Ellen Sharpe Walking, in its simplest form, is an act of joy. A celebration of movement that opens the door to understanding our surroundings. It can be both a profound experience and a gentle reminder of our place within the world. Place is ever becoming and should be considered a rich patina of time and countless unfolding experiences and knowledges. Each layer tells its own story, best appreciated not through plans or photographs, but thr

I recently had the opportunity to spend 6 glorious days in the island nation of Malta, which sits just below Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. It is the European Union's smallest and most densely populated member state. The capital Valletta is a fortified city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site constructed by the Knights of St. John in the 16th century. This "city of palaces" spans less than one square kilometre but stands as Malta's primary commercial hub. Spending time in a pl

In our last Regen Series post, we discussed the importance of creating a new regenerative narrative for our places. This week, we explore how we can make Regenerative Placemaking understandable, usable, and easily connect people to their places. Village Well has been working on the ground delivering successful places for years. So we asked, how do we integrate the complex ideas of regeneration into our processes to enhance the resilience of our places and communities? Here’s

Learnings from Emma Hall, Director of Placemaking With housing affordability taking centre stage in national conversations and cost-of-living pressures intensifying, it is more vital than ever to implement housing models that prioritise both individual and collective thriving. As investment in affordable housing accelerates, many organisations find themselves navigating new terrain where traditional policies struggle to match the pace of growth. For ten years, we have collabo

Creating places that give back We keep hearing that we’re at a tipping point, and this is true: seven of nine planetary boundaries* have been surpassed. Extreme weather events are accelerating. The gap between what we know and what we do about it feels like it keeps growing. Most alarming perhaps is how normal it’s all starting to feel. Have we resigned ourselves to this new normal? What can be done? What will make a difference? Currently, development takes more than it give

Can one person really change a city? Meet our hero, Jane Jacobs, a passionate writer and resident of Greenwich Village during the vibrant 1950s and 60s in New York City. A champion of place, she stood tall against the formidable Robert Moses, known as the master builder of New York. Moses reshaped the city to fit his vision, carving expressways through neighbourhoods, displacing families, and creating a city designed for cars rather than the people who lived there. Their publ

We’ve spent the last two decades building “smart” cities under the pretence that if we could just measure everything, we could fix everything. And so we’ve gone about installing sensors, data dashboards, and digitising our public services. It’s a seductive idea, because who doesn’t want a more efficient city? And yet therein lies the problem – efficiency isn’t the same as health. In city after city, the reality of a smart city has fallen short of its promises, testing the

The Ecology Pillar

Regenerative practitioners, placemakers and people who work in shaping places can help them thrive economically, honour local culture and...

Have you ever walked through a space that just didn’t feel right, but couldn’t quite put your finger on why? Maybe it felt cold,...

As the world continues to grow and evolve at an unprecedented pace, we are also witnessing a parallel rise in disconnection. In a time...