In 2034, imagine the “busy” Glen – schools, train stations and shopping and restaurants, more high-rise buildings….. will we see any flora and fauna? Will we be paying for waste? Will the city of Monash be the most liveable city in Victoria, the vision the council is aiming for?
By the way, liveability’ is concept used by many local governments based on United Nations Sustainability Goals: THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development (un.org) and Australia Urban Observatory’s work: Liveability - Australian Urban Observatory (auo.org.au).
In September, I was part of the Monash council’s initiative to engage a community panel and one of the 22-member community panel member. In this post, I am trying to share my reflection in being part of this panel. The aim of community panel is to come up with their recommendations in achieving the vision of most liveable city in Victoria. There was a total of 4 sessions spanning a month. The process was facilitated by Jacinta and Emily.
In my view, it is one of the toughest facilitations which involved bringing a diversified community group with different age, gender, ethnicity and abilities to aim at the big picture of vision, think macroscopic and articulate the outcome (recommendations). The facilitation team has done fantastic job and some of the observations are
Bringing the panellists’ together by setting right expectations
Often checking about the productivity in the sessions
Trying to improve in each session by incorporating any suggestions
Re-iterating the simple process of funnel from information capture to recommendations.
The second challenging thing is - the diverse community panel has to reach to the level of recommendations, they have to be confident of the current plans, thing big based on the expectations set by the facilitators and above all actively listen to the co-panel members. In preparation of this the council has provided the following items that helped the team to achieve their aim.
Homework 1 - Reading material which included the 4 year plans of council plan, health and wellbeing, asset, financial and 2025-26 budget.
Homework 2 - What is the panel member's image of most liveabile city (by 2034)? This question has impressed me a lot.
Presentations from the council expert staff which included overview of city and people, public health and safety, Asset management and finance – detailing the current statistics, the projections, benchmarking with other councils (refer the Know Your Council - for statistics about all the Victorian councils.) and possible future scenarios
Q&A to experts - in the context of the goal and the responses either immediate or offline were documented in a sharepoint folder that the panel can refer to
The third challenge is agree and drafting the considerations, priotisations for the council and finally recommendations with amicable and assertive wording.
It was a great experience in contributing my foresight knowledge and most importantly getting a chance to meet diverse group of people to achieve common goal which is very rare in our life. The view points of the co-panelists and thought process behind their inputs was invaluable.
I am indebted to the Monash Council-Integrated Planning Team, the co-panel members and the facilitators for giving very rich foresight experience. Looking forward to the final presentation with the recommendations in January 2025 to the new council.
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