Net Zero Precincts: an interdisciplinary approach to decarbonising cities
Net Zero Precincts: an interdisciplinary approach to decarbonising cities
By 2050, over 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. From precinct level to major urban centres, our vision is to help create cities that use net zero energy, are resilient to climate change, and support diverse communities.
RELATED SDGs
About this project
To meet the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Change Agreement, we need to transition our economies and cities to net zero emissions by 2050. It’s a transformation as big as the first industrial revolution. Achieving it will require collaboration and co-creation of knowledge between all sectors of society - governments, businesses, universities and communities.
Monash’s Net Zero Precincts Project will provide an exemplary demonstration project for transitioning our cities – one that can be replicated in other places and contexts around the world. This four year ARC Linkage project will develop and test a new interdisciplinary approach to help cities and urban regions reach net zero emissions. It will do this by taking the precinct as an optimal scale for urban transition.
Through our demonstration project, we’ll experiment, learn and test what works at a precinct scale. Find out more about our Living Lab here.
A transformative approach
The project brings together two key areas of scholarship for the first time – transition management and design anthropology – to develop a new approach to transitioning cities to net zero. We’ll test our approach in an action-oriented case study using the Monash Clayton campus and Monash Technology Precinct. We’ll do this through a portfolio of Living Lab experiments in energy, mobility, buildings, local governance and data. Our aim is to validate an approach for net zero transitions that can deliver for the real-life experiences of the precinct community and its businesses, government, knowledge institutes and civil society. It can also provide significant benefits to industry seeking to enhance community engagement for accelerating urban transitions.
Net Zero Precincts is part of Monash’s Net Zero Initiative – a $135m program that is transforming Monash University’s four Australian campuses to become net zero in terms of carbon emissions by 2030. It includes a range of measures including energy efficiency upgrades, high-performing building facades, campus electrification, a 100% renewable electricity microgrid and 1 MWh of battery storage.
Through this project we aim to:
Reports
Academic publications
Urban planning by experiment at precinct scale: embracing complexity, ambiguity, and multiplicity
Pluralising place frames in urban transition management: net-zero transitions at precinct scale
Trust as a sensory mode of engaging culturally diverse communities in net zero futures
Design cards as visual interventions: visualising and visioning net zero futures
Cycling for net zero transition: diversity, infrastructures and care
Key people
Partners
Our team of researchers and practitioners bring together Monash University’s global expertise as a change agent in net zero transformation with global energy leaders, local government and communities and leading scientific expertise.
