Transcript: 300,000 Streets: A Network for Change (Regenerative Streets Podcast)
Transcript of conversation between host (Laura Aston) and guest (Nina Sharpe)
First aired: 17 November 2025.
300,000 Streets: A Network for Change, Regenerative Streets Podcast © 2025 by Laura Aston is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
GUEST (NINA): ”The earth shot that I lead is 300,000 streets. So really looking at the street as a unit for change and the street as a microcosm of our city. Many of the dimensions of the planetary boundaries and the social foundation's land on the street, which means it's a space of complexity, but also a place with opportunity for change. And the street really is a great disarmer. So it's where we emerge from our private homes into the public sphere and what we can learn from being in the public sphere as a collective, how we can start thinking more as a, as a community.”
HOST (LAURA): Getting outside our homes and enjoying the everyday encounters of the street is something we should all be able to enjoy. What if streets were a source of joy and wellbeing? Supporting natural systems while nurturing communities? In this podcast, we speak to citizens who are using streets in inspiring ways, ways that connect people and places to regenerate human community and environmental health.
I'm your host, Laura Aston. I'm the founder of Wayfinder Labs, an organization that brings diverse people together to regenerate communities, street by street. And this is the Regenerative Streets podcast. Today I'm joined by Nina Sharpe, lead convener of the 300,000 Streets Project, an Earth Shot project run by Regen Melbourne.
Welcome, Nina.
GUEST (NINA): Hi. Nice to be here.
HOST (LAURA): Let's start with the biggest of pictures, and I'd love to hear about Regen Melbourne, the organization that initiated this 300,000 Streets project.
GUEST (NINA): Yeah, so Regen Melbourne is a not-for-profit organization in pursuit of a regenerative Melbourne, we often describe ourselves as an engine for collaboration with a systems change approach to our work.
We're roughly five years old now, born out of the time in Melbourne, in the wake of the black summer bush fires when COVID was landing in the city. And our CEO Kaj Lofgren started to explore the question around what would a regenerative city look like for Melbourne? And that started with, uh, a series of workshops and interviews and connections with over 50 different organizations, which tapped into 500 people exploring the concept of a regenerative city. Using Doughnut Economics as a framework, so looking at the safe and just space for people and planet within the planetary boundaries and above the social foundations, and landed with a regenerative vision that still guides our work today and essentially captures the expression of those 500 people on what the future might look like for this city in response to the poly crisis that exists.
HOST (LAURA): That's fascinating. And a courageous and bold vision for an organization. How did this Regen Streets, or the 300,000 Streets project, evolve out of that vision for a Regenerative Melbourne?
GUEST (NINA): So once our vision was set, that's a big ambition for a city, and begs the question of how? How might we do that? So in order to give some more tangibility and practicality to stepping towards the vision, we set what we call earth shots.
So they're a declaration of intent, or a wildly ambitious project, and an invitation for the city, multiple stakeholders to gather around. The first of which was to make the Birrarung or Yarra River Swimmable. And of course, if we're swimming in the lifeblood of our city, which is a major water source for our city, we know that it's clean and that we've regenerated this important waterway and in turn the other waterways that connect in with that one.
The second of our earth shots is nourished neighbourhoods. So looking at a greater Melbourne scale, allowing people to have access to healthy, nourishing food close to their homes that is largely locally grown and sustainably grown.
And the earth shot that I lead is 300,000 streets. So really looking at the street as a unit for change and the street as a microcosm of our city. If we map the street to the doughnut that I mentioned earlier, many of the dimensions of the planetary boundaries and the social foundation's land on the street, which means it's a space of complexity, but also a place with opportunity for change the 300,000 is because that's roughly how many streets there are across Greater Melbourne. So acknowledging that there is a networked view or a systemic view that we can take and that we can learn at scale by viewing the streets as an interconnected web, whilst also dropping down to the hyperlocal of the street. And the street really is a great disarmer. It's where we emerge from our private homes into the public sphere and what we can learn from being in the public sphere as a collective, how we can start thinking more as a community.
HOST (LAURA): Thanks, Nina. That is fascinating. And those three earth shots are really illustrative of the kind of change that you are hoping to cultivate. How did you arrive at those three particular projects? Could you share a little bit about the process of identifying those three earth shots?
GUEST (NINA): There's a strong interconnection between the three, and actually they are almost like cultural pillars of how we live our daily lives. Particularly in an urban context. Water is integral, our waterways are largely connected to our streets. Our streets are so much more than a mode of transport. They're where we gather, where we connect, and anyone can relate to a street. We all have one in some way. And we can't live without food or water. So they're essential to our daily lives, how we live and to how we interact with the city.
HOST (LAURA): In designing this earth shot or sort of setting the parameters of the earth shot, who did you involve and what did the engagement, the research look like?
GUEST (NINA): As a declaration of intent, we're inviting stakeholders to emerge from their silos. So we needed to connect in with lots of different types of stakeholders and lots of different interest layers in streets. We connected in with everyone ranging from community leaders and residents on the street through to decision makers, media contacts, peak bodies, uh, students, people with expertise in urban planning, ecology, architecture, uh, lots of academics, consultants, startups, designers, a full range of expertise coming together. To seek their understanding of what a regenerative street means to them. We did that in more formal forums and attending other workshops and conversations that were happening and also just on the street with groups of neighbours or with community events and inviting people to speak about their street.
And what we found was, uh, there was absolutely a desire to regenerate the streets. In some cases, people weren't sure how to express that or didn't really know what that meant for them, so we invited them to share their vision. Which helped set the scene for what is now 300,000 streets. And just to share some of the insights that we gathered people were asking for places for people, for somewhere pleasant to hang out, for streets full of laughter. Streets teaming with ecological and community life. For streets where kids could play safely and ride their bikes, places people liked to go and where empowered local decision making was enabled.
HOST (LAURA): An amazingly broad array of people that you engaged in forums or platforms that you went to, to elicit those, those aspirations. So, we can take comfort that this vision for 300,000 streets is really representative of all the diversity that streets are hosts to. What about the barriers to these visions that we've just heard? What is not working at the moment when it comes to streets?
GUEST (NINA): Well, largely we've been living for decades in a place where streets are spaces of top-down decision making where decisions are made, uh, to the people, not with the people. But there's some other barriers that surfaced in our sensemaking in arriving to the vision for the Earth shot. They were around looking at leadership, forms of leadership that are willing to tackle the status quo, that are willing to think differently and, and lead away from the largely car- dominant spaces that, that exist.
Um, and partly that's due to the fact that we can't imagine our way out of, out of today, or we're comfortable, so comfortable in the status quo that we don't need to switch our imaginations, or we're not given space to set lasting long-term visions and to activate our imaginations to do so.
Of course there's the, the silos that exist. So silos exist not only within, government departments or councils, a lot of councils won't extend beyond their own boundaries, but also in communities where there's single interest community groups that don't necessarily collaborate even though they might be in the same neighbourhood or there's, um, communities who might have similar visions across different suburbs. You know, one's in one suburb, there's a group that's advocating for, uh, better bike infrastructure and they're not always speaking to a similar group, five suburbs down. Or maybe there's a, a food forest that's forming in one area and their story's not being shared far and wide so that we can learn from the mistakes that they made and the wins that they had to replicate in other spaces.
Funding is a barrier as well. Funding flowing in into communities or not? How does it flow? Community spaces are funded by grants, which are quite specific in what they will and won't fund. There's an arduous process that people have to go through that is a barrier in itself, and often the grant funding will fund something for a period of time, and once the funding runs dry. So does the community effort and energy. And then around our, um, our infrastructure in the streets, it's quite fixed. It's a product of the top down decision making that has existed. So changing that and enabling even something like chairs that move in a park, so that people can use the park in the way that they want, not the way that someone's decided for them, just doesn't exist. And that's because there's a lot of risk that, uh, government or, governance layers like council hold, which fixes how we use our streets and, and cities.
HOST (LAURA): You've done a lot of work there to summarise the barriers in a way that it doesn't seem insurmountable, which takes us to the solution space. How can we maybe overcome some of these barriers? Has the project got into that, into that space?
GUEST (NINA): In landing on 300,000 Streets as an initiative, we arrived there by acknowledging that it's a contested space. There's many and varied stakeholders involved and lots of different perspectives that exist, which makes it quite challenging.
When we landed on 300,000 Streets, we centred democratic participation and building agency in people, as the key to enabling street level transformation. For the transformation to be done well, we have to allow for places where people can be involved, not just at the beginning and then at the end when they receive the decisions, but throughout and in a deep and meaningful way, that captures the essence of the lived experience of the people who use their these streets every day. So really challenging the notion of democracy being meaning turning up to vote. That is a form of democracy, but for demo democratic participation to be enabled on the streets, there has to be so many more forums and spaces for people to contribute to these decisions that are being made in a meaningful way, and in turn, that builds agency in the people.
So in the work that we've done and the many settings and discussions that we've had, we can see that people often don't know how to advocate for their streets because sometimes they've been asked in an online survey, not in a meaningful one-to-one conversation like you and I are having today where we, um, express our challenges and our desires and form a level of coherence so that we can move forward.
Agency in particular is really important because it has that lasting effect. So it helps manage expectations of decision makers where they can share the load of what it would mean to care for space and share the load of what, how the street is cared for, beyond the changes that are made where people can play a role in that, and they feel like they want to play a role in that because they've been part of the decision making, not just someone who's consulted in a quick, slightly meaningless way.
HOST (LAURA): You've put it. Really clearly there, the case for empowering people at the grassroots level to be able to transform their streets as a sort of sustainable or a solution that can be carried forward. It doesn't require reinvestment and ongoing management because once people are empowered to take ownership, to steward their own street, that begets more, you know, more care, more involvement, more action. That seems so obvious once you hear it. But it's not the way that things are at the moment. What kinds of things are you experimenting with and what partnerships are you exploring to remove barriers to participation in streets and to change those governance arrangements?
GUEST (NINA): There are going to be many ways, not just one way that we step towards the vision for 300,000 streets and lots of different partnerships and expertise to come together in order to be able to do that. So, we're starting with some that we see as stepping stones that are, uh, honing in on particular aspects of the challenges that exist.
So in, in one instance, we're piloting an application called Hum, which is being produced by a New Zealand organization called The Wellbeing Protocol. And this is a distributive grant making app that is designed to flip the traditional grant model on its head, creating a micro-grant environment in a high trust funding environment that's guided by a constitution and some stewards who hold the accountability to that constitution. And enables funding to continuously throw flow into communities, but the community to decide how that money is spent. So really challenging the notion of the grant process that I described before where you ask for money, it's given for a short amount of time, and that effort often drops away. In a micro-grant environment the funding can continue. It can come from within the community or, or more traditional grant funders. But the people are deciding how that funding is spent, and then they're taking the action to spend it in smaller increments that step towards their vision.
Another project that we're partnering on at the moment is in partnership with the University of Melbourne and Office architecture firm who have mapped publicly owned underutilised land at the greater Melbourne scale that spans 1600 kilometres of land and, uh, looks at instead turning this underutilised land that's currently largely lawn mowing and cannot be developed on because it's either electrical wires or an easement or side of the road or otherwise. And instead looking at these as potential biodiverse corridors and giving people access where appropriate to this public space so they can utilise it. It could provide active transport, uh, pathways and really convert what is otherwise unused land into something that has a lot of value to both people and planet in contributing to biodiversity, improving our air quality, including our access to green space and many other things.
And thirdly, we're looking at some work around, um, bringing conveners together. So really strengthening that grassroots, um, and enabling s. Almost like third spaces where people can come together and share their stories. They can have peer-to-peer relationships that help them overcome the challenges that they're experiencing in isolation together, help build out their shared visions and support one another, and just see the great work that is already happening, which is then motivating to amplify that effort and stop the volunteer burnout and keep people, uh, moving forward. So, in a couple of weeks, for example, we've got the conveners of the laneways of the CBD of Melbourne all coming together to build a shared vision and look at what it might mean to work in more of a networked capacity.
HOST (LAURA): Those are such diverse examples, but they are really illustrative of what a street can be. We heard about the natural environment as well as the funding and participation in deciding how money is spent but also looking after the people who are looking after our street. So, thank you for choosing three examples that show just how broad an intervention might be that helps to bring different aspects of the street to life. That makes me wonder, how do you measure progress and how do you bring; how do you unify such different types of projects and measure the direction that you're going in?
GUEST (NINA): It's a complex vision to achieve and like I said, these interventions that we're invested in initially, they provide stepping stones towards, towards the vision, and we'll learn a lot and we'll share a lot and those who are involved in the projects will learn a lot along the way that we'll capture. And that will tell us more about the progress. But then more broadly, essentially, we're asking for streets that are more liveable.
So, there is a measurement of liveability that exists. The Australian Urban Observatory through RMIT University have a liveability index that can tell us, LGA by LGA, the liveability of our suburbs. Ultimately, we'd like to see that improved across greater Melbourne, not just in the greener suburbs that exist already, greater- Melbourne wide. In measuring participation and agency and people, it's a bit more complex. There's not necessarily existing measures that tell us apart from how many people turn up to vote. And like I said, it's beyond voting. It's, we're looking at much more deeper participation than just, um. Uh, voting, voting in an election. So what that might look like is, uh, measuring the percentage of council decisions that have enabled in depth community participation. And having that as a measure that exists within each council. Or, is it also measuring the number of community activated projects that are alive in each neighbourhood?
And what does that tell us about how people are coming together, the community leadership that exists, and the community's ability to move through? At the project level together, which as we know, is quite challenging at the moment. So, there's lots of different ways, some ways that exist how we might measure and some ways that we might need to create new forms of measurements that we can tell.
HOST (LAURA): I hope you don't mind me asking, but did you establish a baseline and are you tracking as you go? How can people keep up in real time with, the progress of this earth shot? Is that even possible?
GUEST (NINA): Because the streets are so complex and there's so many different aspects it's nearly impossible to have a true baseline. I think there's different measures that are in place. So, there's air quality measures that exist in various places around the city that we can tap into. There's traffic monitoring that exists that we can tap into. There's also tree canopy cover that we, that we know, which is of course an essential part of transforming a street. Uh, not just street trees, but street greenery in general. So, there is a lot of existing baseline data that we can draw from, which often exists in isolation in itself. So, we don't necessarily have a, a firm baseline, but we have these multiple sets that we can bring together to show the change.
HOST (LAURA): Yes, that was meant as a bit of a tricky question, and it's a fine line to tow between wanting to measure things, which necessarily loses that complexity.
GUEST (NINA): And I would just add to that, that there's a lot of qualitative measurement that applies here in particular around the narrative and storytelling. So, if we're hearing stories of communities coming together, of people holding street parties, of neighbours helping each other out of social cohesion.
Those stories tell us about change and, and often at the moment, we're hearing a lot of stories around, uh, challenges with, with safety and, uh, concerned citizens. So, if we start to see a shift in those narrative, that's a measure in itself, an enormous measure in itself.
HOST (LAURA): In some ways, what you're describing there is, um, adapting to what you're seeing, and I think that's a really, uh, noble and important approach.
So Nina, I know we've only scratched the surface today of the types of the projects that you've seen, all the people you've heard from and what they're doing at the grassroots level. How can people find out more about this project and how can they get in touch if they maybe are doing a project on the ground?
GUEST (NINA): We'd love to hear some more examples of people regenerating their streets in whatever form or shape that's taking. It's those stories that really bring the vision to life. So please reach out via our website, Regen Melbourne. You can also follow my Substack Street Library, which you can find via the Substack app. Uh, and yeah, please do get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.
HOST (LAURA): Thank you, Nina. And all of those links will be included in the show notes so people will be able to find them and get in touch if they, if they wish.
Thanks, Nina.
You've been listening to the Regenerative Streets Podcast, a show for people who want to embrace local, grow a community where they live, appreciate the little things and reconnect to the abundance of life. It's where we explore how people are reimagining streets to support human, community and environmental wellbeing.
I'm Laura Aston, your host, and I also run an online community where you can contribute to this show. So, join us in the Regenerative Streets hub linked in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you and field any questions you have to future guests on the show.
This show is produced by me in connection with Better Streets and Regen Melbourne. You can find more information about both of these initiatives in the show notes.
The music in this show is Carefree by Kevin McLeod, sourced from incompetech.com and licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 to which you'll find a link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.