Case Studies
Melbourne Water - Our Space Your Place

Design Feature

Type of Project
Landowner Strategy
State
Victoria
Location
Regional
Melbourne Water’s Strategic Direction commits to a vision of Enhancing Life and Liveability. For many decades, Melbourne Water has supplied the community with safe drinking water, reliable sanitation and effective flood management. These are fundamental elements to a liveable city. In an increasingly urbanized region, it is becoming more critical to provide access to high quality, outdoor open spaces. Over 33,000 hectares of Melbourne Water owned land is now available to implement projects and initiatives that benefit the wider community through Our Space Your Place.
Improving Life and Liveability
Big or small, short or long-term, Melbourne Water are interested in a wide variety of projects which can benefit the local community and enhance liveability. To make the process easier, Melbourne Water have developed a new online map-based application called Our Space Your Place, where individuals and organisations can make a formal application to use the land.
The Our Space Your Place portal provides details of the availability, size and potential use of Melbourne Water's many hectares of land. The land is colour-coded, making it easy to find and understand how it can be used.
Applicants can use the portal to make a formal application for the temporary use of land. The applicant is required to provide information about what they intend to do to the site, outlining how they are going to undertake these activities. Any plans or considerations such as planning permits can also be uploaded during the application process. 

Once Melbourne Water receives an application, it is assessed by a number of experts within the organisation to ensure:

  • Public safety
  • There are no risks to Melbourne Waters assets or services
  • Environmental health and cultural heritage values are not compromised.


The Our Space Your Place portal also has a register listing external grant (Find Grants) and the spatial data that comprises of the portal is available for public download. The purpose of this portal is to reduce the barriers for people and organisations who are interested in using Melbourne Water land for programs which improve liveability. The program complements the range of projects Melbourne Water are working on to achieve more community benefit from the land.
Project team
  • Information Technology (Melbourne Water)
  • Property, Waterways and Land (Melbourne Water)
  • Asset Management Services (Melbourne Water)

Project Cost
The Our Space Your Place portal was funded within an existing Melbourne Water innovation budget. The Find Grants link provides access to internal and external grants available at any time.
Health Value
By opening up Melbourne Water’s land for community use, outcomes that improve public health and wellbeing can be achieved. Some of the examples of proposed activities that lead to public health include; community gardens, shared pathways and urban cooling initiatives.
Economic Value
  • The use of Melbourne Water’s land for educational and training purposes could lead to long-term local economic improvements. As well as for commercial use, Melbourne Waters land has been used for:
  • Work for the Dole’ training to develop new skills for the unemployed
  • Horticultural training for people with a disability

Environmental Value
  • The breadth and position of Melbourne Water’s landholdings can improve both the natural and human environment.
  • Many of the land parcels are near biodiverse ecosystems such as waterways and wetlands which play a salient role as habitat for native flora and fauna.
  • These places also provide environmental services to society, such as protecting properties through retention of flood waters, wetlands filtering and cleaning runoff, and vegetation cleaning the air and cooling the micro-climate.
  • Melbourne Water encourages community groups and organisations to use the Our Space Your Place portal as land stewards and all applications are assessed to ensure the environment is not negatively impacted.

Social Value
  • Building a sense of community and place is a key reason for opening Melbourne Water’s land up for public use.
  • This could include creating places for people to meet, grow food and learn to cook, or to acknowledge and celebrate the cultural heritage of Melbourne’s history.
  • Local communities understand the needs of their residents and the Our Space Your Place portal is a platform for organised communities to actively address their needs.

Use Value
  • As Melbourne’s population increases, open space requirements will become increasingly strained. Through the Our Space Your Place portal, Melbourne Water intends to alleviate some of these pressures by repurposing vacant land for activities and projects that contribute to a strong sense of place and community.

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