Common Ground – Designing a Regenerative City

What does it mean to design a regenerative city?

Join the RMIT Nature Positive Network and the Royal Society of Victoria, in partnership with GLAS Landscape Architecture, for an evening exploring regenerative urban design through practice and research.

Mark Gillingham, GLAS Landscape Architecture, will present Michelle Guglielmo Park, a pocket park on Sydney Road in Brunswick developed with Merri-bek City Council. Transforming a formerly concrete site, the project returns 80% of the site to garden and demonstrates how landscape architecture can bring biodiversity, cultural connection and public life back into dense urban environments.

Dr Olivier Cotsaftis, RMIT University, will share insights from design research undertaken in Barcelona, introducing Sensing the City—a novel urban design research method using sensorial walks and mapping to understand cities through the senses. The work asks how sound, light, temperature, smell and other perceptual conditions can reveal aspects of urban environments that conventional spatial data can miss, and how these insights can inform regenerative design.

Together, the talks offer two perspectives on a shared challenge: how can we better understand, design and regenerate the places we inhabit?

The evening will conclude with a panel discussion and industry mixer hosted by Dr Thami Croeser from the RMIT Centre for Urban Research, bringing together academia, industry, government and civil society around climate, biodiversity and liveability.

RSVP: By 25 September 2026

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This event is hosted by the Royal Society of Victoria at their historic Melbourne home.

Please note the venue has stair-only access, including a flight of stairs up to the theatre room and amenities. If you have any questions or concerns about accessibility, please reach out to the RSV team at rsv@rsv.org.au.

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