City of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

ABP Symposium - City of Melbourne

About City of Melbourne

Melbourne city snapshot

Melbourne is Victoria's capital city and the business, administrative, cultural and recreational hub of the state. The entire Greater Melbourne area covers 9992.5 km2 and has a population of around 4.96 million.

The City of Melbourne municipality covers 37.7 km2 and has a residential population of almost 180,000 (as of 2019). It is made up of the city centre and a number of inner suburbs, each with its own distinctive character and with different businesses, dwellings and communities living and working there.

The City of Melbourne's population is made up of many groups of people of all ages and from many different cultures. Residents include young professionals, international students and older couples looking to enjoy everything the city has to offer.

On an average weekday around 972,000 people use the city, and each year Melbourne hosts over a million international visitors.

The City of Melbourne as a council (Melbourne City Council) oversees the municipal area that includes Melbourne's city centre and several inner suburbs. As a capital-city council, it also speaks on behalf of Melbourne in local, national and international forums.

The City of Melbourne works with other local councils and the Victorian Government to ensure that Melbourne is one of the safest, healthiest and cleanest cities in the world. It supports Melbourne's position as Australia's pre-eminent centre for arts and culture, education, dining and shopping.

City of Melbourne’s Challenge

Aligned with the global community, progressing climate change adaptation measures will be critical to addressing challenges faced as the world’s climate changes. Extreme heat, higher intensity rainfall, extreme storms, risks of future droughts and rising sea-levels are predicted. The municipality’s population is expected to nearly double in the next 20 years with growth expected to predominately occur in low-lying renewal areas at risk from flooding and storm surges. It is important that we plan for this growth with a future climate in mind.

Integrating climate change and sustainability into all council strategies and plans is crucial if we are to address these impacts. We hope to use this challenge to see how we could apply the SDGs to further embed and track progress on climate change action across council.

Using SDG 11.7 which relates to climate change adaptation, urban greening and health and wellbeing as an entry point to applying the SDGs would help provide a way to track our progress and identify gaps towards increasing green cover across the city and making that green cover more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Achieving this goal and target aligns with several other SDGs including good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, climate action, life below water, life on land and partnerships for the goals.

By understanding the SDGs that align with our climate change adaptation goals there is potential to localise targets and indicators to provide a framework for reporting and benchmarking our climate change adaptation actions. Such a framework could facilitate further integration of climate change and sustainability within council strategies, plans and operations – ensuring Melbourne is an inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable city.